September 1, 2008
This criminal gets arrested and is being interviewed by this reporter who breathlessly asks him if he knows where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is. The young hoodlum looks at her and says, Who the hell is Jimmy Hoffa? And the reporter doesn’t know. And the criminal couldn’t care less. Only we the audience are left to suffer.
September 2, 2008
There is a fatal flaw in democratic politics. It’s the idea that one person is elected to represent the interests of multitudes. That is a sweetly idealist idea on paper, but a severely co-opted one in reality. People in power don’t represent you and they don’t represent me, they represent themselves, their positions of power, their funders, their party, their alliances, their own ideas about what they want to do. Yours and mine are left behind in the echoes of campaign rhetoric. Politics are not about us (the people), it’s about them (the politicians).
September 3, 2008
Day Care in Canada
We don’t need no stinkin’ toys and crayons and paints and indoor rooms with plumbing and heating, all we need is a bar. We like to keep things simple up here, so there is only one Day Care rule: if you fall off the bar you have to sit there until someone else falls off, then you get to get back on. Crazy? Not! Look how good we turned out!
September 4, 2008
I went flying in this puppy last evening over our beautiful lake and mountains with the wind blowing freely through the open cockpit and my good friend behind me at the controls. We swooped and swerved and circled and I’m pretty sure I never stopped smiling. I may have even said Whoo hoo a time or two. It was a vintage blast. More, please.
September 5, 2008
I went to visit a buddy and found him pouring over maps of the world. He had gold stars next to some very small countries and tiny islands in the middle of the ocean. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, “I’m looking to move to a place that will be so strategically insubstantial as to escape the wrath of the larger war mongering nations when they finally start killing each other, and they will, ‘cause all I hear these days is incessant blather about war and hate and pompous self-righteousness. If I move to a place with one of these gold stars, I can live my life in peace, no one will care about us and I’ll survive.” Hmm, is my friend just paranoid or crazy like a fox?
September 6, 2008
My advice? Do what you want. It’s infinitely more rewarding than not doing what you want.
September 7, 2008
The new NFL season starts today. I know it seems like I’m saying Whoo hoo a lot lately, but...
September 8, 2008
Due to budget cuts and “the fact that we’re pretty sure terrorists can’t ski”, the federal government has but one Mountie patrolling the whole 6,000 square miles of the Canadian Arctic. He is Sergeant Jules Picanté, tough and determined, rakish in a beret, shown here slapping on the boards and heading out to look for northern shenanigans and Arctic wrongdoings. Don’t mess with Canada, eh?
September 9, 2008
Just what am I doing here? I am casting my two cents worth out to the masses and drawing to this site those who, for whatever reason, find themselves here. Knowing that 100% of the people who end up here, are supposed to be here, negates the need to advertise or solicit. This fine situation is the result of content. I’m just saying what I want to say and letting those who find value in it discover it for themselves. Darned natural really, I think.
September 10, 2008
How shocked would we be as humans if we found out that our human stock is not of Earthly origin? Happened all the time on Star Trek. An alien race sets up shop on some uninhabited planet and gets to work making babies and communities. A few ancestral epochs later, all those people now feel that they are native to their planet, but they’re not. What makes us humans so sure we started here? What if one day we hear, Hello Earthlings, all your base are belong to us.
September 11, 2008
I have some steel stacked down by the barn and yesterday afternoon I went to reach for a piece that had been sitting in the sun. Ow, damn hot; I had to put on gloves to handle it. As I picked it up, I saw a small green inch worm working its way across the back of the steel. What?! How could this tiny critter with all those legs stand the heat?
September 12, 2008
THE HADRON COLLIDER'S FIRST EXPERIMENT
-- Oh my god, what is it?!
-- I...I don’t know!
-- It’s hideous! (she shrieks)
-- Let’s do some more experiments!
-- Yes, let’s do the one where we make a black hole!
-- Oh hurry, boys, suck this hideous thing into the netherworld!
September 14, 2008
Why were we absent yesterday? Our network virus protection found a pernicious Trojan after an overnight scan. It took me 9 hours to deal with its removal, during which time I repeatedly imagined impaling the punk who created it with a long, sharp, cruel, terrible, horrible deathly instrument of ingenious design. Of course, they promised never to write another virus again. Too bad punk-o, one is enough. Take that!
September 15, 2008
I love industrial stuff. I like the noise and the oil and the grease. I love the ambience of factories, garages, warehouses and trucking depots; steel excites me, - ooh, I had to get some matching replacement bricks for a support column that’s spalling, so I went to a huge brickyard in a nearby town and in rapture wandered the acres and acres of stone and brick and tile and concrete. This place was so swell, I lingered. It was just like Disneyland, if Disneyland were a brickyard in British Columbia. That was a good day.
September 16, 2008
THE HADRON COLLIDER'S SECOND EXPERIMENT
September 17, 2008
Whoops, it’s been brought to my attention that for some reason, apparently some e-mail is not being received at the site. If you have written to us recently and not gotten a response, please write again so we can sort out what is going on. In the meantime, apologies to all who have had this happen. Yeesh, eh?
September 18, 2008
I was talking long distance to a friend from college when I realized that I hadn’t seen him in over 20 years (we live on different ends of the continent), yet we can both go back to those earlier days together and discuss stuff as if it were fresh and happened yesterday. This is because time is a mental construct, so it can be eliminated by the same tool used to create it – one’s mind.
September 19, 2008
I was downtown and saw this crazy rig of a homemade vehicle. Fugly it was. It looked part bus, part motorcycle. It had 7 wheels, space enough to hold at least 11 people, a gob of windows, and was painted purple and yellow. The driver’s seat was outside, while everyone else was enclosed. Even though it was parked, it looked phenomenally unroadworthy and highly illegal, but lo and behold it was sporting a set of license plates. I’m sure quite a bit of engineering went into the making of this, but I couldn’t help wondering, why?
September 20, 2008
I got a call from a European film producer who wanted a super quick rewrite of a script that was very near a principal photography shoot in Montreal. We discussed the changes he wanted, I agreed to the project, and he sends me the script from his office in Rome. It’s in Italian! I call him back. You don’t have an English language version? No, he tells me. The original writer was Italian, it is an Italian production being shot in Italy, except the ten days in Montreal - Wait, he says, I’ll have Montreal send you their pages. Brilliant! The script arrives - it’s in French! Jeez. Wait until I send the Italian director, in French Montreal, the changes in English. Ha!
September 21, 2008
Neil always surrounded himself with gadgets. That was his thing.
September 22, 2008
Appreciation for your environment is a key component of the good life. Today is the first day of Fall. So I say, appreciate it. Even if it’s just looking out your window at the trees in your yard while you kill time on your couch between commercials for underarm wetness (horrors!) and insurance companies targeting seniors.
September 23, 2008
Jackie would go up to strangers and offer them fish. Whole ones, with the heads still on. He was a good lad, he was. Everyone used to say, Good ol’ Jackie, what an unusual boy.
September 24, 2008
It was the best of the 80s. A young, perky cutie pie in a yellow and blue all spandex full body workout outfit complete with leggings and yellow headband (think Olivia Newton John on crack), was blithely bopping through a department store followed slowly by an overweight, ugly bald guy in an expensive suit chomping an unlit cigar (think Don Rickles on a bad day), the two of them drawing stares from virtually everyone, neither of them caring. It was like a retro video was being shot where a tarty little gold digger finds herself a real life Vegas style sugar daddy, and the two of them are unleashed upon the public, neither caring what strangers think about their demented love. But this was for real. Gosh.
September 25, 2008
Do you think it’s a coincidence that Earth is just far enough from the sun to be illuminated, electrified, and warmed by it, and not burned to a crisp, incinerated, or so far away as to mitigate any benefit from this awesome stellar ball of fire? I think not.
September 26, 2008
Last night we built a fire, set up the card table, opened some champagne and played cribbage. It was fun, romantic and alcoholic all at the same time. The only trouble was, games bring out the competitor in me, and that kind of ran counter to the nice vibes we had going with the crackling fire and all. After one particularly egregious and devastating Muggins, I condemned members of my wife's ancestral family to an eternal damnation, I couldn’t help myself... sure, it darkened the mood...
September 28, 2008
This weekend has been hectic busy. Frankly, I don’t like it one bit. This concept that productivity somehow aids one’s life, makes you a better person, is probably a corporate inspired lie. Look, when you’re on vacation and being intentionally nonproductive, do you feel better than when you’re at work and being super productive? Of course you do. So the next time your boss tells you to get cracking, teach him a lesson, go on vacation. What, works for me.
September 29, 2008
3 days ago a bear dug up an underground wasp nest and destroyed the winter food supply for the colony. It also left a big open hole in the ground. It’s way too late in the season for these wasps to recoup what they lost and still survive. They are just crawling about the open hole and over the destroyed hive with nowhere to go and nothing left to eat. The world can be a cruel place.
September 30, 2008
I was driving home yesterday when I came across four cows that had gotten out of a nearby field. They were in the road, on a blind curve, and it was clear they were an accident waiting to happen, so I called 911. Here is that conversation.
Me: There are four escaped cows on the road.
911: What do you mean?
Me: You know, cows that found their way out of a fenced field and are now mingling together in the road.
911: What do you mean by mingling?
Me: Hanging out. Congregating. Mingling.
911: What kind of cows are they?
Me: Two are black and two are brown.
911: Do they have any identification?
Me: You mean beyond the fact that two are black and two are brown and they are standing in the middle of the road on a blind curve?
911: Yes.
Me: No.
911: Do you know whose cows they are?
Me: If I did, wouldn’t I go tell the owner his cows are loose instead of calling 911?
911: Can you see them now?
Me: Yes.
911: Are they being aggressive?
Me: They’re cows.
911: But are they aggressive cows?
Me: No, they’re just road hazard cows.
911: Do you have anything more you want to add?
Me: Uh, no.
911: All right, we’ll dispatch an officer to investigate. Thank you for your call.
Me: It was nothing.
And so ends the month of September.
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KeithSpeak October 2008
