January 2011
December 2010
1 tag
1 tag
Squirrel terrorism update
Last week I wrote about how I am being terrorised by angry Ottawan squirrels who haven’t forgotten my unfortunate accidental running-over of one of their brethren several years ago.
Since then, they have attached another poster demanding restitution (in nut form) for the deceased squirrel’s family. I mentioned this to my wife’s family, and commented that I will refuse to live in...
2 tags
The Taxonomy of Animals according to the Celestial...
In his essay The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, Jorge Luis Borges refers to a Chinese encyclopedia called the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. According to the book, all animals are divided into the following classes:
Those that belong to the emperor
Embalmed ones
Those that are trained
Suckling pigs
Mermaids
Fabulous ones
Stray dogs
Those that are included in this...
5 tags
Sitting down to Christmas dinner
Mrs Fuiru (Pouring drinks): I read somewhere that this style of champagne glass was modeled on the shape of Marie Antoinette's breasts.
Father-in-law: Shame she wasn't a Double D, eh?
Mother-in-law (Appalled): ...shall we say grace?
F-i-L (Whispering): You can take the man out of the navy...
Everyone else: [Uncontrollable laughter for five minutes]
2 tags
At a small party with friends last night
One girl was telling us of a really embarrassing thing that happened to her recently.
“So I was texting “I love you” to my boyfriend, and well…you guys with iPhones, you know how sometimes it just sends texts to the last person you texted? Yeah, I sent it to my boyfriend’s sister. I was soooo embarrassed.”
“Well,” I said, sitting forward in my...
Taking the train to Ottawa makes me wish I lived...
Then I realise the other residents’d all be like, “art galleries? Never heard of ‘em” and “you listen to music therefore you must be homosexual despite being married to a woman” and “your lack of casual bigotry and your English accent will make you an outsider here” and possibly “your outdated and cliched views of rural Canadians do you a...
The best thing about travelling by train is...
And then pretending to be an unconscionable racist after ten seconds so they stop talking to you.
I think I forgot to mention that I’m travelling to Ottawa tonight by train. It’s fun.
What I love most about first-class rail travel in...
Attendant: What can I get for you sir? Coffee? Tea?
Passenger: Cognac?
Attendant: Cognac it is, sir.
2 tags
Strangeness
Just had a dream that I went skydiving in Toronto Harbour with Beth and Jason.
That wasn’t necessarily the weird part, the weird part was that nobody blogged about it for a week afterwards.
Strangeness
Just had a dream that I went skydiving in Toronto Harbour with Beth and Jason.
That wasn’t necessarily the weird part, the weird part was that nobody blogged about it for a week afterwards.
2 tags
2 tags
Truthful Tuesday
Sometimes people do things that are shitty and disrespectful and you don’t call them on out on it and hold your tongue and say “it’s fine, it’s fine,” just to avoid the confrontation.
This means that the other person will do the same disrespecful and crappy thing again and again. And you have two options. Tell yourself you’ll call them out next time, or do...
2 tags
Do you need urchins? We got urchins! Come to Ted's...
Is your snowy Dickensian landscape missing that certain something? Is there a dearth of small, undernourished children with sooty faces walking outside your bedroom window on Christmas morning? Need someone to carry giant poultry from the butcher’s to your unsuspecting employee’s house?
Then you need Ted’s Urchinnery!
Whether it’s orphans, pickpockets, gruel-seeking...
“The philosopher George Santayana famously remarked that those who forget history...”
– Charlie Brooker, on top form in the Guardian.
damndanm asked: "...remembering the time, years ago, when I ran a free Internet training club for over-60s called “Silver Surfers”, and shuddering."
Please tell me this is real and then tell me about it in long, anecdotal detail. Please?
Please tell me this is real and then tell me about it in long, anecdotal detail. Please?
damndanm asked: "...remembering the time, years ago, when I ran a free Internet training club for over-60s called “Silver Surfers”, and shuddering."
Please tell me this is real and then tell me about it in long, anecdotal detail. Please?
Please tell me this is real and then tell me about it in long, anecdotal detail. Please?
do-over replied to your post: Wait, it’s Sunday tonight, right?
I’ll meet you for breakfast at The Village Idiot at 7:00! Can’t wait to see your sunshiny face!
This is absolutely true: As I was trying to think of a response to this comment, an advert for Coca-Cola came on the TV and the guy was asking why time travel hadn’t been invented yet and he said, 100% word for word:...
Wait, it's Sunday tonight, right?
Oh, shit.
Oh, shit shit shit.
I just had a bottle of wine.
And pretty much a quarter bottle of gin.
Oh shit.
It’s Monday tomorrow, isn’t it? Oh shit.
This is why my wife isn’t allowed to visit her parents without me. This is why I’m not supposed to be left at home by myself.
Oh shit.
Tip
If you buy a rather nice and expensive bottle of beer for someone as a gift, and a cheap bottle of stout for cooking with, and they’re in the same size and shaped bottles, don’t put them down next to each other on the kitchen table when you get home.
This had better be some mighty good spaghetti sauce.
Does hand cream go stale?
I ask because my incredibly manly Neutrogena Hand Cream (designed for and used by burly Norwegian fishermen so it’s not sissy at all, humph) has been with me now for more than three years and I’m starting to wonder if that smell coming the other side of my cubicle isn’t actually my coworker’s box of shoes.
(That isn’t an exagerration, by the way. She has a box of...
Dear employee who has over $6000 of outstanding...
You had my sympathy until I saw the receipt for a KFC Double Down Combo.
Now I know how Nuclear Reactors Work!
I mentioned yesterday that, because I work in the finance department of a nuclear safety consultancy, I had been booked for a special internal training session on how Canadian nuclear power stations work, for non-technical staff.
Having sat through four and a half hours of training written by engineers for children/the mentally lacking/non-technical staff (delete as appropriate), I can now share...
1 tag
Remember how I mentioned that last night was my...
And how I had a bottle of delicious beer brewed in the casks of 40-year-old malt whisky waiting for me when I got home?
Turns out Mrs Fuiru had got me a little something extra.
My favourite bourbon, to be exact.
How much do I love my wife? 127% (proof).
Tumblr Assignment
Tangible: My blue eyes and chin-dimple (or ‘chimple’, as I never call it)
Intangible: My ability to make people laugh, especially my wife.
Tomorrow I will be taught how a nuclear reactor...
Given that my company is a nuclear power consultancy firm, the powers that be decided a while ago that it would make sense for all staff - even the cleaners - to know a bit about the stuff that 99% of the employees are working on. So tomorrow I am spending four hours on a course called “Intro to CANDU [the model of nuclear reactor we specialise in] for Non-Technical Staff”. I’m...
1 tag
A birthday poem for Jann
A feline of mathematical inclination
Had a problem at her birthday celebration
“I need to know my food and drink optimization
How can I increase my hunger utilization?
I know!” she said, “I’ve got just the calculation!
I’ll solve that puzzle with simultaneous equation!”
Happy birthday Mathcat!
Can someone please explain to me what's going on?
3 tags
1 tag
4 tags
“Do you need to go to college for that?”
– My wife’s Current Affairs discussion on prostitution with her students reveals that there is a lot they have yet to learn.
“Fuck you to fucking fuck, Edmund! You’re a fucking fuckwit fuck with no...”
– This is why I can’t watch The Chronicles of Narnia with my wife’s family.
Clash of the Titans
Pfft.