Here there be mutants

Now, some of you may or may not have read my post on velociraptors, found here, who reside on the outskirts of my home city. You all might be surprised to learn that in addition to knowing where some velociraptors live, I also know where some top-secret government research on mutants goes on as well.

The government was very clever in hiding this research centre in plain sight on one of the most traveled highways in Canada, the TransCanada Highway which links this fine country across the south from Pacific to Atlantic Oceans. Because who would think that something in plain sight for all to see would be all top-secret and stuff? Plus it's just a convenient location with a breathtaking view, and we all know real estate is location, location, location.



Yes, I know it's a little crooked, small, and my
windshield was likely dirty, but what do you expect
of a picture taken at subsonic highway speeds?



I should add a caveat at this point, in that I don't know if the research conducted here is on mutants. It's just a theory of mine. They could be harboring aliens looking to immigrate to our fine world, developing viruses in a quest to make military weapons (if zombies ever start appearing, this is likely the source), or simply perfecting the recipe for pumpkin pie in order to make the most delicious pie known to mankind (you all may have argued apple, but really, pumpkin is far better.  Plus it's my blog... author's choice). Or really, it could be any combination of the above.

At any rate, I know it's all top-secret and stuff because it just looks mysterious.  I mean, you're driving along, seemingly in the middle of the wilderness with nothing around for miles and miles except trees, mountain goats and elk, and BLAMMO!  You're hit with this mysterious looking building and something that looks like a water tower.  I have Google'd and searched and can honestly find nothing that explains what it is, thus my conclusion must be correct. 

And I suspect that they are doing research on mutants because the setting looks suspiciously like that place in the second X-Men movie where Wolverine discovers where he was 'born'.  Sans the big dam and lake of course, but it has mountains and snow, what more do you want?!

Additionally, we all know that whatever Hollywood potrays is the absolute truth (again, see my previous post on velociraptors, found here), therefore I must conclude my conclusions are infallible.

Now see?  You are better off for having read my post, because if zombies or bad-guy mutants ever start appearing and you want to go all Alice or Professor Xavier on their ass, you'll know where to start your hunt.

You're welcome.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Lame Christmas Commercials

Now that the Christmas holidays are approaching, the virtual cornucopia of lame Christmas commercials has returned to the airwaves trying to entice you to buy everything from alcohol and high-fructose corn-syrup-laden drinks to toys for as-yet-unreleased movies and diamonds (they are forever, don't you know).  Because after all, if we all consume/use/promote/buy these things our lives will become magically perfect and even I will start to like certain members of my family, and indeed hug them when I see them instead of my usual forced-smile-then-ignore tactic.

Not likely.

Dr. Seuss had it nailed with his story about the Grinch, folks, however this falls under the category of 'yet another post idea'.

There are, however, a few commercials out there that do fall into the category of not-so-lame by virtue of being clever, making one laugh, of just having that awwwww... factor.  The infamous polar-bears-party-with-penguins-over-a-bottle-of-coke commercial has that awwwww... factor, so I have to admit being not completely annoyed by it, just somewhat annoyed.   I feel that I must point out some fundamental errors in this commercial, in the hopes that future generations will not be swayed to stupidity by the massive Coca-Cola marketing machine.

1. There is nowhere on Earth, to my knowledge, where polar bears and penguins co-habitate the same locale.  Except maybe zoos.  And I don't see any high-tensile wire fences, moats, or Asian tourists with cameras anywhere in that commercial.

2.  I'm pretty sure once she's been knocked up, ole mama bear promptly kicks papa bear's ass off the ice-flo.  Maybe he was running around with a local grizzly floozy, maybe she's just tired of his lazy ass always watching the football game and never taking out the trash.  Either way, poor Junior (or Juniorette) is guaranteed to be from a broken home.

3.  I wasn't aware penguins squeaked/squealed/trilled.  I always thought of it as more of a buzzing squawk.  But hey, you never know.  National Geographic might just have it all wrong.

4.  The Beach Boys penguin-party music you had going last year was much better.  'F' for effort this year, Coke.  Who the hell is that anyways?!  There isn't even any lyrics.

5.  Way to exploit the whole 'cute factor' to get people to buy your shit.  While I can appreciate the whole cuteness of your commercial, it still won't entice me to buy your crappy product.

In conclusion, all I can say that if Coke actually is on to something, and sharing a bottle of Coke with your enemy will bring world peace, let me be the first to contribute to a campaign involving shipping bottles of Coke over to Afghanistan and every other war-torn locale on the planet.  In fact, I'm thinking this commercial might do better to air in such regions instead of here, show 'em all how it's done.  Oh, wait... they likely don't have sufficient money to buy a bottle of Coke in these regions, so it'd be a marketing fail.

Let cynicism reign supreme.

In the meantime, enjoy the awwwww... factor, and have a Merry Christmas!

YouTube - Coca Cola Arctic Beach Party 2010

Here there be velociraptors

There is a large industrial area next to the city where I work, and I pass through this area on my commute home.  There is an area of the industrial park that has been effectively abandoned due to either damage from a F4 (possibly F5) tornado that tore through there just over 20 years ago, or simple economic downturn.

It is a sad area, all overgrown with weeds and trees, and buildings still standing as if they are simply waiting for someone to return while slowly decaying away.  Within this abandoned area of the industrial park, right next to the main road, there is a building.  The building is kind of a stark contrast to the area around it, because while the industrial land surrounding is of the aforementioned overgrown variety, the building itself is still in quite good shape.  I believe someone takes care of it, but it is still very clearly abandoned with it's vacant, slowly crumbling parking lot and overgrown landscaping.

I have a unconfirmed suspicion about this building.  While the building is 'reported' to be owned by Imperial Oil, and the site abandoned due to reasons stated above, it is, I believe, the lab building from the second Jurassic Park movie, based on the Crichton novel The Lost World.  You know, the one from InGen's Site B on Isla Sorna where all the actual work of cloning the dinosaurs went on?  There is definitely a coverup going on.

I am convinced that if I enter said building, I will discover dusty DNA extraction and analysis machines, a defunct dinosaur egg hatchery (complete with dusty, broken, oversized egg shells), various sized cages to hold juvenile dinosaurs, and hungry velociraptors which will try to eat me.  They recently boarded up all the windows, and I am positive the reason is to keep the velociraptors from getting any ideas about leaving and terrorizing the city at large.  You can only hungrily watch the rush hour traffic going by on the road outside for so long before you decide to be proactive about your situation.

The main lesson here is, however, that boards on the windows or not it's only a matter of time before man's abominations run amok, as Hollywood has shown us time and again.

Repent while you still can.  Oh, and save up gas money.  Because the large oil refineries all reside in this industrial area right next to the cleverly disguised Site B lab building.  And once those velociraptors escape and eat all the refinery workers, the cost of gasoline for your fine automobile is going to skyrocket.  And really, isn't that the biggest issue here?



It's always too dark to take a picture when I drive past (and I don't really want to stop anyways, I mean what if the 'raptors escape??) so I drew you this picture instead.  I hope you like it.  You can't see the DNA equipment and egg hatching stuff and cages because it's all in the back of the building I think.  I really don't know because I've never been in there.  I mean, who would want to go into a building with velociraptors waiting to eat your face off in it??



On farts and genius theories

I've often wondered what it is about going to the bathroom that somehow makes one an instant super genius. I know a number of people that have stated they do their best thinking on the toilet.

There is a humorous saying out there that states never to hold your farts in, because they travel up your spine to your brain and that's where shitty ideas come from. Maybe that's why we all think better on the toilet... we're not holding our farts in!

Theory postulated... now to test.

I'd also like to point out a fun app I picked up for my iPhone that allows me to blog from anywhere. So far, works well and is easy to use. Might also help me test my above theory.

You never know where I'll be blogging from next...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Unfinished stories

I was surfing on Amazon.ca this evening, hoping to find a craft item that I have been thus far unable to find anywhere else, including eBay (I thought you could find everything there).  This surfing led to me perusing my wishlist to see what items I had added to it, which then led to me checking to see if Battlestar Galactica had been released as a complete DVD set (as opposed to season by season).  It had.  I added it to my wish list (I'm hoping it'll appear magically around Christmas time), and then noticed a link at the bottom of the page of a list that someone had created of their favourite shows.  I decided to peruse it to see what they had been watching.

I noticed a lot of great shows on the list, like Firefly, Defying Gravity, Flash Forward... all shows that I was really enjoying when they did their TV runs then were killed prematurely by their respective networks.  And it led me to thinking about another series I had recently picked up on sale that I had watched as a teenager, Space: Above & Beyond.

At this point, I started to get a little angry/depressed.

You see, there are a lot of really great untold stories out there in the form of TV shows that were cancelled before their time.  Networks these days are so focused on viewership and getting that latest greatest hit TV series that they really don't care that they leave some of us in despair of how the story ends.  It's highly annoying.

Take Space: Above & Beyond, for example.  I remember thoroughly enjoying the show, and grabbed it on sale because it's something I wanted to watch again.  Last spring, I went on a little bit of a bender when sick for about a week, and watched the entire thing from beginning to end again.  It was FANTASTIC!!  When I was done, however, I was angry for approximately a week wondering where the story had gone, how it all would have concluded.  Firefly - ditto.  Except I am, to this day, devastated that they never finished the series.  The movie Serenity was just a teaser, and not enough.  I felt this way when Defying Gravity ended recently as well.  Did they all go crazy with their hallucinations?  Did they make it to each stop on their journey?  It was as if Michael Crichton had never finished Jurassic Park, and had just left us all hanging wondering if these people had gotten off the island or not, or had all been eaten by dinosaurs.  Not exactly bestseller-let's-make-it-into-a-blockbuster-movie material.

I briefly thought about adding a few of these shows to my wishlist, but then decided against it.  I don't need yet another letdown of an unfinished story.

Networks, I am losing faith in you fast.  When you keep absolutely inane shows like Desperate Housewives, Big Brother, and Survivor on for seasons upon season, and kill stuff that actually has some substance and imagination, it makes me just want to turn you off.

Which I usually do.

Morning people

I am not a morning person. 

I discovered this in my teen years where my non-school day routine consisted of getting up around 9am, showering, then crawling back into bed around 10am and sleeping until 1pm or so.  Luckily, I have an amazing Mom and Step-Dad who never hollered at me to get my ass out of bed, or banged on my bedroom door until I stumbled out all bleary-eyed and grumpy.  It also helped that my brothers, although 7 and 9 years younger than me and supposedly under my watchful care, were very self sufficient little monkeys and contented themselves with cereal and weekend cartoons while the aforementioned parents wandered off to work (they owned their own retail business, which was a 7-day a week affair). 

Needless to say, once I completed university and wandered off into the big, wide world I was delighted to land the job I am currently at (I am no longer as delighted with said job, but again, another post).  See, my current job is a shift work job, whereby I work 12 hour day and night shifts, resulting in mega days off for me to continue to practice my morning sleep routine (the routine has evolved somewhat, but it still does not involve a morning that begins before 8:30am).  When I started this job, I was treated to a shift work seminar that was designed to help me understand just exactly how much this great idea of shift work was going to add to the productivity of my employer, but in the end really screw with my body and likely leave me riddled with cancer and unpronounceable diseases by the time I retire.  Oh, and it taught me what I already knew; that I am indeed "an owl" and not "a lark".  Those are fancy terms for saying that I'm not a morning person.

Luckily in addition to this job, Husband has no problems with me continuing to practice my morning sleep routine, so barring any unforeseen life-altering diseases in another twenty or so years, all's well that ends well.

Or one would think.

Now, at this aforementioned shift work job, I end up working day shifts (obviously).  These commence at a ridiculously early hour, namely 6:45am.  I tolerate these day shifts, resigning myself to just a single tear when the alarm goes off at 5:20am instead of the torrent of tears that threatens to flow as my despair at the hour is so great.  Even my dogs don't want to get up at this hour, and they get excited about everything.  I don't even think my alarm clock wants to be awake at this hour, but it's dedication to me is astounding.  I shower, get dressed, grab my lunch then head off to work.  Once at work, however, things can really start to unravel.

You see, I work with some people who are those evil, nasty larks.  And some are the type of larks that think everyone else in the world is a lark too, and have no concept that some of us would really rather be left alone first thing in the morning.  There are few things worse after managing to get up at some unholy hour than walking into work, sitting down, and getting a lovely cheery "Good morning!  How are you this morning?".

Between simultaneously wanting to punch this individual and rip off their face and stuff it down their throat, I usually manage to snarl out a "Fine" between gritted teeth.  I really wish I could tell them how I actually feel.  It'd be something along the lines of "Well, my alarm clock jarred me awake at some hour that shouldn't even exist, I haven't managed to fucking fully wake up yet, and I really don't want to be here.  Additionally I want to rip your face off and shove it down your throat right now.  Other than that, though, I'm great!  How are you?".

I respect that you are a morning person, and even envy you a little.  But you, lark, are to me like a Jehovah's Witness standing on my doorstep.  I respect that you and I are different, but please please PLEASE do not invade my personal space trying to sell me on your philosophy.  It does nothing to magically make my morning all better, so save it.  While this may sound overdramatic, I honestly do not need to be reminded that yes, I am up way too early and still blurry-eyed and tired.

The morning is hard enough to survive as it is.

Puppy terrorists wreak havoc in Garage

Photo from the scene of the attack.

In other news this morning, the former terrotist group known as "The Puppies" was detained for questioning following an incident yesterday.

A lawn chair cushion was attacked and partially disemboweled in Garage's north side, with members of the group being the prime suspects. While the chair cushion did survive, it is highly questionable whether it will be able to return to it's former duties. 

    

Crime scene photos of the victim.

The group was thought to have ceased it's terrorism activities, and had been given greater freedom within Garage by local authorities. In the wake of this attack, however, the group will remain in detention in Garage's notorious Pen holding facility pending investigation. A spokesdog for the group had no comment for the media, simply saying "Woof".

More to come as this story develops.

-------

Update:

Surveillance photo of group member.

Members of a former terrorist group simply known as "The Puppies" continue to be held this evening on suspicion of being responsible for an attack on a lawn chair cushion on the north end of Garage.  The unwarranted, violent attack on the cushion involved biting, tearing, and partial disembowelment, resulting in severe injuries that will likely not allow the cushion to return to it's former duties.  It is unknown at this time what the fate of the cushion will be.
 

Surveillance photo of the group member.

The group was detained this morning after authorities discovered string from the victim during a routine probationary visit to the holding facility known as the Pen, where the group has been residing temporarily until authorities move them to a permanent residence in the late spring at an as yet undisclosed location.  These probationary visits have been a necessary condition of the enhanced freedoms that have been extended to the former terrorists based on a Good Behavior Deal that authorities brokered with them approximately a month ago.  The deal released them from mandatory confinement in the Pen, and allowed them to roam Garage with little surveillance by authorities in exchange for them ceasing thier terrorist activities.  Further investigation after discovery of the string as well as questioning of the suspects led to the discovery of the crime scene and victim.

Surveillance photo of group member.

The background of this group is well known, and their activities have been monitored since their arrival in Garage in the summer of 2009.  Initially the membership of the group was larger, however approximately a year ago there was some infighting in the group which resulted in three members leaving and relocating to other locations.  Attacks had previously been mostly directed at sticks, bones and squeaky toys, but disturbingly they had occasionally shown a penchant for liking things filled with stuffing and foam.  The members of the group spent time in and out of the Pen, with their activities while out of the Pen under surveillance by authorities in an ongoing investigation of the group until recently when the Good Behavior Deal was reached.


It is unknown at this time whether the terms of this deal will be upheld, and a decision will likely be made once the judge returns early this week.  The spokesdog of the group has continued to reserve comment for when the judge returns from his trip, again brushing media off with a "Woof".

Baby it's cold outside...

So last night we had the dubious honour of hitting a horrendously low temperature, that we honestly in this neck of the woods don't generally find until the end of January into February'ish. For those that don't know, my neck of the woods is north central Alberta (which is in western Canada for the geographically challenged).  


I don't live in a city, so get to avoid all that urban-heat-island mumbo jumbo and experience temperatures in their true, fantastic, bitter (in the winter at least) form.  Official low from the international airport about 20 minutes away from me was...


...wait for it...


... - 32.3 degrees Celsius.  Factor in that there was likely a wind chill of some sort involved as well, and it was likely close to - 40 out there last night.  For all my  American-speak readers, those two numbers equate to - 26 and - 40 Fahrenheit.  Either scale you look at however, it was really, really fucking cold.  Lemme explain...


Anything below 0 Celsius is simply considered cold in my books.  When you hit the - 15 to -25 range, it's really cold.  Anything anything below - 25, and you get into the really fucking cold category (additionally, insert whatever number of really's that you wish here).


To be honest, however, once the ole thermometer hits about - 25 Celsius, it really all starts to feel the same.  I kid you not when I tell you that - 25 and - 40 feel pretty much identical up here on the prairies (well, technically where I live it's aspen parkland/boreal transition, but really, splitting hairs here... especially since we've been heavily deforesting for 100 years to make way for various grain fields and pasturelands... anyways, digressing, sorry).  


When temperatures drop this low, I thank the powers that be for inventing the wood-burning stove and saving our gas meter from spinning around like a figure skater on meth performing a scratch spin (I have issues with figure skaters too... hey, another potential post topic!).  At any rate, while the temperature is still hovering south of that magical - 25 this morning, it's sunny outside, so there is much solace to be found in that.


Alberta winters.  Gotta love 'em.


So in the spirit of it being really fucking cold outside right now, I'd like to share a list of things to do when it's this cold outside.  Enjoy!


1. Fire up the wood-burning stove.


2. Complain at Husband when he overloads the wood stove, resulting in a house that feels like an oven baking a turkey at Thanksgiving.


3. Sit on your ass and complain that there's nothing on the satellite television feed that you pay outrageous amounts of money for (don't these channels make their money off advertising?!? - hey, another post topic!).


4. Sit on your ass and complain that the PVR isn't working properly (I swear if this one dies Shaw can take it and shove it where the sun don't shine).


5. Look into hotel and flight deals to somewhere tropical.


6. Blog.


I'd also like to share a small list of things NOT to do when it's this cold outside.


1. Go outside.


2. If you must go outside, do not stick your tongue to any metal objects. Hey, I wonder when "A Christmas Story" is going to be on...


Stay warm, good readers, and Ciao! until next time. 

New day, new blog

Well sports fans, here we are.  New blog, first post.  An epic day indeed!


Or not.


At any rate, I guess I should give you all the warnings and legal mumbo jumbo regarding my blog.  


First off, I am not really responsible for anything my mind writes on here.  My mind and I may co-habitate my body, but we have an agreement that my mind does nothing to endanger nor embarrass my person, and I limit my alcohol consumption to the very occasional evening bender (I know, lame, but hey we all have to move beyond the college/university years sometime).


Second, this blog is not G-rated.  While I go through my daily life doing my best to be all tactful and G-rated (or at the very least, PG) I refuse to do such on my blog, because hey it's the internet and we're talking freedom of expression here.  Plus, my father is a truck driver.  I blame him for branding all these bad words in my brain from a very young age.  Thank you Dad for improving my vocabulary.  Heaven knows Mom certainly appreciated it.  Possible post to come on that later...


Third, don't expect regular updates.  I am a busy person with a busy life, and will try to get on here as often as ideas pour out of my brain, but there's no guarantees, people.


Fourth, there really is no legal mumbo jumbo, beyond don't be an ass and sell any stellar ideas I may blog about to big, evil corporations.  Because my brain knows kung-fu, and will find you...