20,000 bees

This just out of Jolly Old Blighty; A swarm of bees forced a jet to land at Bournemouth, England after it was sucked into one of the engines about an hour into the jet's flight to Faro, Portugal. There was a surge in engine power and then the pilot turned back and landed. Mechanics got to work, scraping out the bee juice and after eleven hours they gave up and brought in a back-up jet.
Some witnesses "claimed there were around 20,000 bees."

My question is this; When you count bees do you count the legs then divide by six, or count the antenna and divide by two?

My second question is this; I wonder if this helps explain what is happening to the world-wide bee population (which is dropping dramatically)?

Anyway... Humouroceros

Mork

Ah, Mork. The erstwhile alien from the wacky 70’s television program Mork & Mindy and portrayed by a much younger and manic Robin Williams. Yet another TV show that was initially inspired before traveling down the usual TV-land road to “all the usual nonsense”. The first episode, where Mork arrives on Earth, has Mindy meeting the freshly arrived alien, who has managed to dress himself backwards, and thinking that he is a poor confused guy. She brings his home to help him out and then her dad shows up and gets the wrong idea. Next scene Mindy’s dad is alone (and since this is the 70’s which was only a quick decade away from the 60’s when EVERYBODY drank on TV) and drinking. A buddy of his shows up, who just happens to be a cop, and Mindy’s dad tells him what he thinks is going on, that his daughter has a live-in boyfriend. He then asks the cop to go over and run the mutt off and the cop agrees. He gets to Mindy’s apartment where Mindy is gone and Mork is acting as oddly as ever, so he arrests him and has him committed. Mindy finds out and freaks, her dad says that he hadn’t meant for this to happen and they go down to where Mork is being judged. The Judge is surprisingly open-minded and says that although Mork appears to be eccentric, there are no laws against that. Then he sentences Mork to live with Mindy, thus giving hope to all the eccentrics out there (Mindy was played by Pam Dawber who looked pretty good in tight jeans, if you know what I mean).

When accused of being crazy, as proof the cop says that Mork is wearing a wrist-watch on his ankle. Mork responds that that would be crazy. He is wearing an ankle-watch on his ankle.

When Raquel Welsh asks Mork what he has in his pocket he says, “nothing. I’m just happy to be here.” That wasn’t from the first show, but it’s still pretty good.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Hamas takes the Mickey

Farfour sings, "This is how we play with the Jews!"

In it’s continuing efforts to engage Palestinian youth the Palestinian militant group Hamas has ‘borrowed’ an idea from the decadent, freedom-loving west and hired a giant mouse to be co-host of the popular children’s show, Tomorrows Pioneers. The show is broadcast on al-Aqsa TV. According to station manager, Ahmed Yassin, the show had been becoming a little too bogged down in political and religious indoctrination and the show’s original host, Aziz al-Rantisi, tended to either frighten children or bore them, depending on whether he was threatening them or praying at them.

“Once we reassigned Aziz and brought our current host, Saraa, on-board along with Farfour (the mouse’s name, which means either ‘butterfly’ or ‘slaughter the Israelis’, depending on where you place the accent), the show just took off.”

Farfour has a couple of trademark moves that the Palestinian children seem to enjoy, such as pretending to throw a grenade or shoot a rifle. And while the political indoctrination is still there, Farfour presents it in a manner that the children can understand and enjoy. “The people stand singing this to you,” he squeaks, “it’s answer is an AK-47.” And the kids really take notice when he sings, “We are the predators of the forest,” because who doesn’t want to be a predator? Like a bear, or a scary lion.

Unfortunately this latest Palestinian initiative has come to the notice of the Big Corporation Industry Association of America (BCIAA). The head of the BCIAA, Buster Iliketosue (pronounced I-like-to-sue) says, “Borrowing ideas is fine. We do it all the time. But this Farfour character is too much!”

“My personal assistant brought me a recording of one of those Farfour shows and for the longest time I thought it was a new M*ck** M**s* skit (vowels deleted at the insistence of BCIAA legal counsel). I mean, there he was shooting guns and throwing grenades and stuff, just like the real M*ck** would have if he had thought of it, and I’ve never been able to understand that voice of his anyway. Then I saw a transcript of what he was saying and at first I thought, 'Holy crow, D*sn**’s really going in a new direction'. Then I realized, we had ourselves a situation here.”

Iliketosue continued, “At first D*sn** wasn’t too interested, but after we pointed out that if you let this sort of stuff go unchallenged then the next thing you know you’re selling your theme-parks so you can afford food, well they came online right after that.”

As things stand now, the Palestinian Authority has requested that al-Aqsa TV pull the show and in a surprising move al-Aqsa agreed. Hamas has agreed to “review” the show for any inadvertently offensive content. Further news will be provided as events warrant.

Anyway… Humouroceros

This just in!

An actual satellite photo of Jerry F heading home. Burn baby, burn!

Anyway... Humouroceros

Jerry's new home

Jerry Falwell was called home today.

Anyway... Humouroceros

Cindy

I don’t know. Maybe I’m being a little more sensitive than usual but this just looks strange to me. From $500 a month to $2000 a month working from home? I suppose that it’s possible, but I don’t know how likely it is. And, since she is looking to expand in new areas all over Canada, wouldn’t one try to look a little more professional than a spaghetti-strap top, no matter just how good one looks in it? I don’t think I’m old-fashioned, but I’ve been wrong before.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Peter Jackson not doing The Hobbit

Okay, I get it; Peter Jackson will NOT be directing The Hobbit. The people at New Line Pictures HAVE done something totally stupid and Peter Jackson WILL NOT BE DIRECTING THE HOBBIT. This is not some media ploy or ‘knock ‘em down then bring ‘em back up’ sort of thing’, this is a horrible fact. Peter Jackson will not be directing The Hobbit. A while back he and Fran Walsh wrote a letter to a fan site saying they would not be doing The Hobbit, and why ( see http://www.theonering.net/staticnews/1163993546.html ) but I still didn’t believe it. Now it turns out that his next movie is The Lovely Bones, and then he will be part of a Tintin trilogy with Stephen Speilberg. There is no mention of The Hobbit at all. I’ve got to go lay down for a moment. This is… This is…

Anyway… Humouroceros

21st Century gamblers fashion

There is a company out of Kitchener, Ontario (check out: http://kitchener.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-health-special-needs-Adult-Incontinence-Cloth-Diapers-NEW-27-39-Waist-W0QQAdIdZ13612436) that will sell to you, for $35 ($60 for two pair) a pair of fashionably coloured adult diapers, which are being advertised as perfect for, “Gamblers all night in the Casino.” Apparently some folks who are in the lower numbers, IQ-wise, have figured out that if they sit (in their own urine) at a slot-machine for long enough, pumping in whatever you shove into those things, they will win big. Speaking for myself, I would have to win pretty big before I would sit in my own (or anybody else’s) liquid waste.

I don’t know if this is becoming required fashion for casinos or not, but I would suspect not. I’ve always sort of figured that people who go to casinos in the first place have a self-image of themselves as, say, James Bond in Monte Carlo, playing vingt-et-un against some Russian spy, and sipping on a dry martini, shaken not stirred. To me the adult diaper just doesn’t fit into this picture.

Also, the fact is that your average slot-machine works totally randomly and you can slam in all the quarters you want but your chances of winning do not increase. There is a reason that they are called ‘one-armed-bandits’, and there is a reason that casinos are called 'casinos' and not 'we-give-money-away-places'. Of course someone who has a gambling addiction would never look at it that way, or probably even believe it and therefore the adult diaper is a reasonable choice for casino attire. As Groucho Marx used to say about his brother Chico, (I’m paraphrasing) “he would stand in front of a movie-theater playing Ben Hur and place bets that Ben Hur would lose the chariot-race because he figured that Ben Hur had to lose eventually.”

Anyway… Humouroceros

Montreal bar mitzvah

Dr. Peter Neumann had arranged to have his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Montreal at the Cultural Center in the West Island community of Pierrefonds. When the 350 guests showed up the janitor in charge of the Center was drunk. During the evening the janitor refused to restock the restrooms with toilet paper or hand-towels, sexually harassed female guests, stole the ice from an ice-machine the Neumanns had provided and tried to sell it back to the family, refused to help when some guests, including a paraplegic, were trapped in the Center’s elevator and when there was a medical emergency refused to call 911, insisting that he didn’t know the address of the Center.

Understandably the Neumann family was upset by this and demanded an apology from the city of Montreal, which operates the Cultural Center. The city of Montreal, trying to do the right thing, replied with a 40-page defense statement, which claimed, in part, that the Neumanns were lying when they said they were Jewish. Dr. Neumann responded to this by suing the city for either $20,000 or $70,000, depending on where you get your information from.

Since then, the city of Montreal has taken full responsibility for what happened and fired the janitor. I wonder if they also fired the SOB who figured that the Neumanns were pretending to be Jewish. I would have.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Hit and runners

There was an article this week in the Vancouver newstabloid, the Province, about a hit and run on Saturday, May 5/07. A twelve year-old boy was hit by a car when he ran into the road. It was a low-speed impact and the car stopped right away. An older lady got out of the car and upon noticing that the car had stopped with a wheel on the young boys wrist told her husband to back up off the wrist. Then they beetled off. I think that is pretty much the definition of a hit and run.

The hit and runners involved read the story in the Province and became offended because they felt that they had come off looking pretty bad. They went to the police and said that after they had hit the boy they had stopped to see if he was alright. As the lady was asking she noticed that the car wheel was perched on the boy’s wrist so she told her husband to back off it. As there was no blood or obvious bruising, and apparently since all sorts of people have cars parked on them every day, they figured it was all good and went home. Fair enough.

It all looks reasonable and above-board so one would have to be totally unreasonable to ask, or even wonder, why these two poor victims of circumstance (the hit and runners) didn’t bother to go to the boys home and let the parents know what had happened, or at the very least, phone the police and report the incident when they got home. I mean, gosh, they only ran over a kid, and it’s not like he’s dead. Like, why’s everybody getting all complainy about this? Jeez.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Han shot first

Han shot first. Even though Greedo had his blaster out and aimed directly at Han the whole time, Han managed to shoot him before Greedo could even get off a single shot. That is unless you watch the ‘revisionist’ version where Greedo does shoot first, missing Han by about a meter (hardly likely when you think about it). I don’t know why George Lucas felt that he had to resort to revisionism by digitally altering the scene so that Han is a kinder and gentler kind of space pirate (or ‘scoundrel’). This is just wrong. The fact is that Han played Greedo like a fish; lulled him into a false sense of security, then blasted him without mercy. Bye-bye Greedo.

I don’t think we should feel sorry for Greedo either. The guy was probably not one of your good guys and a careful viewing of the scene leaves one with the impression that Greedo was all set, and in fact was looking forward to stealing the money that Han was going to pay back Jabba the Hutt with, then killing Han and trying to steal his ship, the Millenium Falcon. Now there’s a bad-guy. So yeah, Han shot first and that is the way that we should remember it.

Anyway… Humouroceros

Paris Hilton

It's all over the Internet; Paris Hilton may go to jail for forty-five days. Paris says it's not her fault that she was caught driving around without headlights and with a suspended drivers license (for drunk driving) because her stupid publicist said she could. The Judge says Paris has no credibility and is a liar. Paris's lawyer says she is being punished for being a celebrity.

If I had an opinion on this I would say that generally anything that keeps a drunk off the road even for only forty-five days is a good thing. But really, who cares.

Anyway... Humouroceros

Poker and Bowling - Sports?

In the gym I go to there are a whack (where a ‘whack’ is equal to 8) TVs along one wall. This is so that while exercising your body you don’t have to exercise your mind, so you can turn it off for a while and watch some tube. My personal choice is to plug in the old I-Pod and listen to some decent music since any day of the week I would rather listen to bad music than watch good TV (not counting Battlestar Galactica, any of the Star Treks, or the Trailer Park Boys, obviously.)

Generally I completely ignore whatever images are flickering away on the screens, concentrating on getting the old heart-rate up to 130 or so although I do look up every so often just in case something interesting accidentally makes it through the lawyer and censor filters employed by all the major networks. Two things caught my eye the other day. There were two sports channels being displayed and what I found odd was that unless you consider poker or bowling sports, neither of them was showing sports. Weird.

The fact that poker is shown on TV at all is pretty strange anyway. The fact that it is shown on a sports channel is even stranger. I would have figured that the only cable channel that would even have an audience big enough to justify showing poker would have been the FDS (Fat Drunk Smoker) network, but I guess even they have standards.

The four poker champs, or studs, playing that morning would have been difficult to caricature since they were already caricatures. There was the nervous, sweaty guy (going a little heavy on the sweaty part), glancing at his cards all the time and mopping his dripping brow. There was the cool red-neck with a ball-cap, mirrored sunglasses (since the lights in those poker stadiums are so very, very bright), and a t-shirt from his favorite country and western bar. There was the ugly alcoholic who had a face, which looked to have been pushed through one too many bottles of scotch, vodka, gin or whatever. The last ‘athlete’ was the ‘smart guy’, dressed a little sharper (in a grimy hipster sort of way) than the others and packing a smile that never changed.

Surprisingly enough there wasn’t a lot of action, unless you consider ‘sweating’ action, and the most exciting thing I saw was when the alcoholic shot his wad, got up and walked carefully around the table shaking hands with his opponents. After all, these men were all warriors on the same battlefield and booze-boy had just retired with honour. It was kind of touching, but not really.

As far as the bowling goes, I just don’t like bowling. It just seems too Flintstones to me, and that is kind of weird because I do like the Flintstones. I suppose that really it is kind of like curling, which is in the Olympics, and curling is sort of a sport, so I guess bowling is too. I don’t know. I’ve been wrong before though, so it doesn’t really bother me much any more.




Anyway… Humouroceros

Fun with pictures

Anyway... Humouroceros

Bundeswehr

So I scored a shirt the other day with this picture on it and personally I quite like it. My sister saw it and asked what it was all about. I told her that it was a picture of a raven or a penguin and the word above the picture, 'Bundeswehr', was German for either 'raven' or 'penguin', or perhaps 'duck'. She said no way it was a penguin because she had known a few penguins in her time and they didn't have claws like that. I disagreed and said that penquins must have claws of some sort since they had to fight killer-whales and walrus's down in the frozen south. She said maybe, but only because she had never seen a penguin underwater.

Anyway... Humouroceros

Ahhh...

Anyway... Humouroceros

A part of nature

I was talking to a friend at work when the subject of hunting came up. “So where do you hunt?” he asked. “I don’t,” I answered.

He gave me a knowing look. “I get it. You don’t want to tell me where you go.”

“Not really,” I said. “I don’t hunt. I don’t own any guns and I don’t go out into the woods to whack animals for food or fun. I don’t hunt.”

He sat there for a few moments and I could feel the chill that had suddenly come into the air. “So you’re one of those anti-hunting guys.”

“Nope. I just don’t hunt. I don’t care if you do. I don’t”

“Yeah. So you’re anti-hunting. You are against hunting, right?”

“Wrong. I just don’t hunt. If you want to hunt, fly at it. Knock yourself out. Make a weekend of it. It’s just not something I’m interested in doing. My dad tried to get me interested in hunting and it never took. My great-grandfather hunted, my grandfather hunted, several of my uncles hunt and my dad hunted. I don’t.”

“So why are you against hunting?”

Getting frustrated, I said, “I’m not against hunting.”

“But you don’t hunt.”

Ah, light at the end of the tunnel. “No”

“So you’re against hunting,” he said triumphantly.

Crikey. “I am not against hunting. Bring in a moose steak and I’ll help you eat it. I don’t hunt, myself. Why is that so hard to understand?”

He sat for a while, ruminating over all this. Finally, “Do you fish?” he asked.

“Yeah, I have fished. Not in a while but I have fished. It can be pretty relaxing.”

“Do you catch and release?”

“It’s been quite a while since I fished at all but if I ever do I don’t think I’ll release anything I manage to catch.”

“Well then,” he leaned back, satisfied, “you are a hunter.”

“Sure. If that makes you feel better.”

“You don’t consider fishing hunting?”

“I guess, technically. But it’s not exactly getting out into the woods, tracking an animal and killing it. Fishing is more luck and hunting seems to be more of a skill. I couldn’t track an animal if it left a trail of breadcrumbs and spray-painted trees.”

Surprisingly enough, he conceded the point. “Okay. So you don’t hunt.”

“No.”

“And you’re not anti-hunting or against hunting in any way?”

“Not against hunting for food, no. Trophy hunting is a little sick.”

“You’re not a hunter,” he observed.

“I’m not a hunter,” I agreed.

“Well then,” he said, “I guess I’m more a part of nature than you are.”

Yeah. Whatever.

Anyway… Humouroceros