I saw this meme over at Culture Kills, and thought I’d give it a try. Easy enough.
Let’s Make a Band:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
(you might have to click new random quotes at the bottom)
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
You then take the pic and add your band name and the album title to it, then post your pic.
I ended up with a band called Battle of the Alamo, and (happily!) the end of a Lester B. Pearson quote, generating this debut effort:
Little known fact - it’s the 50th anniversary of broiler chicken.
To commemorate the auspicious moment, CBC Calgary has put together a terrifying time-lapse slideshow of how the cute little chick of yesteryear have morphed into the mutant, top-heavy freak seen in this police lineup style shot.
Check out the photo gallery “50 years of Broiler Chicken - 1957 to today” to see how large and quickly chickens grow today. (The image above shows the eatin’ on a 55-day-old bird from 2007 compared to the scrawny weaklings of 1957. Kids these days.)
No wonder Alberta likes its beef. I wonder what the sirloin photo gallery would look like?
Tim Horton’s famous Rrroll up the Rim To Win contest doesn’t start until March, but one of my colleagues is getting prepared.
Today he walked in with this handy little device - the most Canadian of inventions:
Know what that is? It’s a purpose-built tool called the Rim Roller, which he bought at Lee Valley Tools for a mere $2.50. And it works like gangbusters, I tried it.
That rolled up real good! Now Daniel has months to perfect his rim rolling form, and create works of art like the above. I have no idea why Tim’s doesn’t sell these at the store and give the proceeds to their children’s camps (maybe they will this year.) You have to think the staff would prefer this precision-cut cup to the gnawed-on messes they are normally handed.
Side benefit: as this article points out, you can now unroll someone else’s cup you found on the street without worrying about catching a nasty disease.
Of course, if that person comes after you demanding a DNA test, as happened in Quebec in 2006, the Rim Roller won’t help (I suppose you could throw it at them) - your saliva won’t be there to prove your case. Better lick it first.
So, how much coffee would one have to drink to make this purchase worthwhile. I don’t know, but according to this blogger, who has a numbers obsession almost as strange as my own, the odds of winning even a cup of coffee are about 1 in 9.
And according to CBC, the wonky prefab distribution of prizes means there are some places with rrrreally long odds - for example, you CANNOT win a car with a medium coffee in B.C., or an extra large in Eastern Ontario. Still, as Rick Mercer says in this spoof, there’s nothing more Canadian than donuts, coffee, and regional inequality.
A few weeks ago, I started another counting project, similar to the Commuting by Numbers series I’ve been running on and off since February. But this one is much simpler:
I’m counting the ratio of construction workers visibly working to those just standing around.
I pass about a dozen enormous construction projects on my way to work each day, and I can’t help but marvel at how much standing around is getting done in this fair city.
Don’t get me wrong, construction is a tough gig. I’ve done it, and while it doesn’t rate among the worst jobs I’ve ever done, it wasn’t easy either, and I count myself lucky to be doing what I do today.
In construction, some measure of standing around is necessary. You can’t swing a hammer or work a shovel for eight hours straight - everyone needs a rest. And building a skyscraper is a complex puzzle of interwoven tasks that can’t all happen simultaneously.
But still… it doesn’t exactly look efficient. At the job site beside my workplace, it seems like at any one time, half the workers don’t appear to be working. So I decided to see what the proportion really is.
So, the task is very simple: take a look at any job site, and count how many people are working and how many aren’t. To make it fair, I use a very liberal interpretation of “working”: sitting in a truck or crane even if it isn’t moving; touching a tool or carrying anything (a piece of paper will do); holding a sign or looking around as if you are monitoring something - these all count as work.
Not working includes standing or sitting alone, eating and drinking, smoking, and the ever-popular watching someone else work (without at least making foremanly gestures).
Standing, like the gentleman pictured above, on the sidewalk with an upside-down traffic sign and leaning on a rail doesn’t count. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you the cutline about such sign-holders from a friend of mine: ‘Slow’: It’s not a sign, it’s a label.
Here are a few of my activity observation notes:
Construction site: RBC Centre and Ritz-Carlton, Wellington St., Toronto
Date: July 17, 2007 - 3:00 p.m.
Working: 10
Not working: 25
Date: August 29, 2007 - 2 p.m.
Working: 17
Not working: 27
Date: September 17, 2007 - 9:30 a.m.
Working: 39
Not working: 36
Date: September 21, 2007 - 4:00 p.m.
Working: 11
Not working: 16
For those keeping score at home, the proportion is 77:104 - at any one time, 43 per cent of employees were visibly doing something.
In the future, I may break this down by day of the week and time of day - for examply, anecdotally it would appear that much more gets done in the early morning.
So - take a look at a job site near you, and send me some numbers! I’ll post them here. And if you’ve ever worked construction, let me know what it’s been like.
Last week my boss discovered an(other) amusing deficiency in Microsoft Word.
Open MS Word, and type the word “information”. Then look for a synonym using the built-in thesaurus.
You are offered:
- in order
- in sequence
- in turn
- in rank
- in a row
Not what I was looking for. If you look up “information” elsewhere, say, answers.com, you get words like “knowledge”, “intelligence”, “facts” and “data”. Look any of those up in MS Word, and you get “information” as the first synonym.
I was kinda hoping “knowledge” would say “be acquainted with a protuberance”…
OK, so despite all the blog entries I’ve got waiting in the hopper, I had to say a few words about last night’s excellent Police concert at the Air Canada Centre.
I was a huge Police fan in high school. Huge. Problem was, I was a few years too young to catch them in concert. All my friends’ older brothers went to the Police Picnics (they also gave me wedgies) but I didn’t really twig to the band until Ghost in the Machine. I was rabid by the time Synchronicity came out, but then, so was everybody.
So last night was a chance to correct a missed opportunity of 25 years. And to seal the deal, I went with my old high school friend Peter, who was also a big fan.
We seemed to be typical of the ACC crowd – security staff were careful to weed out anyone not between the ages of 30 and 40. Like the band, we’ve aged a little from the days when the Police played the Horseshoe Tavern. Dancing was replaced by happy tapping of feet, and during the slow songs you could see people rhythmically waving their Blackberries. I did smell pot at one point, but it may have been a special effect.
The night began with a reasonable set by mini-Sting, son Joe Sumner’s band Fiction Plane. He too plays in a trio – and I’m reminded how uncommon that actually is. He’s got a great voice, much like his father’s, but the set sounded like mud and nobody really cared. To alter the expression, the Police are a tough act to precede.
While Fiction Plane was droning, I wandered about in search of an overpriced T-shirt. There were many to be had, but they were astoundingly lame, which made me fear for the concert ahead. See, the Police don’t have a new album out, and everyone knows why they are touring: a) to make money, b) to give the crowd a selection of greatest hits. (Quality time with Sting Jr. is probably 59th on the list.)
Making money on former glory was the souvenir theme too: previous album covers silk screened on T-shirts (plus a nondescript “reunion tour” shirt indistinguishable from the scalper versions available at Union Station, except that they cost $30 more.) Seriously, they sold the same Synchronicity T I had in high school and now use for washing the car. If I could have found (or fit into) my Dream of the Blue Turtles shirt, I’d have blended right in. I briefly pondered whether buying and wearing a Ghost in the Machine golf shirt would carry enough apparent irony to be worth $60, but decided the answer was no.
Anyhow, soon enough the lights dimmed, the crowd went nuts, Message in a Bottle started, and I was transported back to the great time I missed out on lo so many years ago. The band was very tight – no sign of rust, bickering or arthritis here. Sting looks exactly the same as he did 20 years ago; Stewart Copeland hasn’t aged much either. Andy Summers looks a little jowly, but he doesn’t play with his face and his hands are none the worse for wear. On the contrary, in concert he was given plenty of opportunities to do those lovely, wanking 70s-style guitar solos that didn’t appear on any album. I’d have thrown my underwear if I was 500 feet closer.
To my delight, it appeared that both Sting and Andy Summers were playing the same battered instruments they used the first time around. Sting’s bass had no varnish left on it and only half the wood; Summers is the reason I bought a Fender Telecaster in university. (I was about to put it up for sale actually – contact me if you are in the market – but after last night I think I need to play it a few times first. I learned a quite a few Police songs when I used to play, though of course I lacked the talent and effects pedals to do them justice. I was probably the worst guitarist in our school, but I did own a flanger, and fingers long enough to play Every Breath You Take. If I had either tone, rhythm or dexterity I’d have been a rock god.)
That dreaded song did get played, in workmanlike fashion (it’s a song about stalking that later made Sting uncomfortable, and its original recording session nearly killed them.) In fact, there was a certain workmanlike, professional edge to the whole affair, as if everyone knew what the assignment was, and decided to carry it out to the very best of their abilities, whether or not the passion of three decades ago was still there. They did appear to be enjoying themselves somewhat, particularly when they acknowledged the crowd between encores.
Anyhow, the concert was a real treat. Before hand, Peter and I decided on the three tracks we’d most like to hear (Next to You, Truth Hits Everybody and Omega Man) and the first two were delivered, with gusto. A couple of songs were altered to accommodate aging vocal chords, and the mix was occasionally iffy (how hard can it be to mic a trio?) but these are small comments on an otherwise delightful evening.
Now, if I could just bring Joe Strummer back from the dead for a Clash reunion, catch a touchdown and date a cheerleader, my revisionist high school years will be complete. Oh, and erase the wedgies.
Yep, another potty post - note my use of the appropriate icon.
The men’s washroom nearest my desk at the CBC HQ in Toronto is usually free of graffiti.
When there is some, it’s usually marginally witty or timely.
Which is why I was so surprised to see this bit of poorly written, unintelligent scrawl in the stall:
“Do you like having ONE NIGHT STAND…?”
What the hell is that supposed to mean, and if it’s not rhetorical, how am I supposed to respond?
Well, I’ll tell you how I’d respond, if I were the graffiti writing type. In fact, I gave a lot of consideration to actually writing underneath it, but decided to do it here, virtually, instead (god, I’m such a goody goody.)
“YES. WITH TWO NIGHTSTANDS, I KEEP FORGETTING WHERE I PUT MY BOOK.”
OK, not that funny. But at least you don’t have to scrub it off - you can just click that little “close window” X… which I see you are doing now….
So, my boss was in New York City last week to give a talk at a conference. His daughter is a Donald Trump fan, so he went into Trump Tower looking for souvenirs. Once she was taken care of, he skipped past the expensive clothes (and $100 steaks?) and found the least costly item available - this funny little souvenir fridge magnet, which he presented to me with the requisite implication that I should pack up my desk drawer:
“You’re Fired!” You know, Trump’s catchphrase from The Apprentice.
But look again. It doesn’t say “You’re Fired.” It says, “Your Fired.” Y-O-U-R… the possessive form of “you”, not the contraction of “you are.”
Am I missing something?
Is there an Apprentice inside joke about misspelling The Donald’s famous catchphrase?
Perhaps it’s deliberately misspelled, to protect his effort to trademark the properly-spelled slogan?
Perhaps it’s the start of a different sentence, such as: “Your fired clay pot is ready, Mr. Trump”?
At first I wondered if it was some cheap NYC street vendor knockoff… but nope, check out the bag, left. The real deal.
I wonder if The Donald owns a 1970 Chevelle?
Ever wondered how your computer cursor works? Here’s a website that shows you what really happens as you move your mouse.
http://www.1-click.jp/
“With the aid of a screen magnifying lens, the mechanism becomes apparent,” the instructions say.
It’s quite slow to load, but when the image appears, slowly move your mouse over the light gray circle and you will see how the magic works. Don’t forget to click, too. You can also double-click - and make sure your sound is on. Enjoy!
Paris Hilton’s friends predict prison will do wonders for the airhead heiress. I agree. Some of my Facebook friends are wondering what she’ll wear… here’s my best guess. Good luck, girl.
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