Next time you need contacts get yourself some Crazy Eyes.

I've received the following email message from many different people (thanks by the way):

"This month and next Earth is catching up with Mars, an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history.

The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.

Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years but it may be as long as 60,000 years.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles and will be (next to the moon) the brightest objectin the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide.

At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to he naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August Mars will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

But by the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m.

That's pretty convenient when it comes to seeing something that no human has seen in recorded history.

So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month.

Share this! No one alive today will ever see this again."


I thought at first it was a hoax when I got it three weeks ago, but when we were in the Shuswap with Leslie and Ron I could plainly see Mars very brightly the first night we were there. Again, last night when traveling back on the Albion Ferry from Langley there it was again, due East, brighter still. I thought I'd check around for links to verify this info and found one at the NASA site, a link at Space.com and one at the Discovery Network Canada site. I guess it is going to get closer.

In the words of Jack Horkheimer, the Star Gazer, "Keep looking up!" Here's a REAL media link to Jack excitedly babbling about this summer's Mars encounter. I just love this guy.

You can't be in T.O. today? Why not listen online starting at 12pm ET right here.

UPDATE 1: Right now, 12:30 ET, they're playing gay videos by the bands that are playing today. Another CBC cluster F$#@!

UPDATE 2: Now there's some streaming stuff... not very good, but it's there. ;)

Gretzky says teenager Crosby could break his records | CP Go Sid Go!

Court rules against lifting Pickton publication ban

Now I know Mr Pickton is to be gauranteed a fair trial, but aren't we the public also gauranteed freedom of information? I don't think that letting out some details is going to taint the entire province and make it impossible to find an impartial jury. How on earth can someone be impartial anyway?

Question to potential juror, "Would you consider someone who murdered 15 women a bad person?" DUH!

CBC News: Fans line up as Stones just a kiss away I hope that the concert has the desired effect and draws tourism dollars back to Toronto. They've really been devastated by the whole media panic around SARS.

Do you have a dog? Do you like dogs? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then check out DogReader. The authors call it, "An ever growing resource for people who love dogs."

CNN.com - New on Fox: When objects impale people - Jul. 28, 2003

Thanks to Kat T for another cool link.

How much do you want to bet this crink isn't very popular any more?

Fianlly a glass that tells the bartender that it's empty. Too bad iGlassware wasn't around when I was still drinking. I'd have never had to go thirsty.

Thanks to Ryan T for the link.

Pull his finger
Thanks to Donnie Mac for the link.

TechTV | RIAA Hit List Thanks to Matt S for the link.

Here's Leslie's take on last weekend. It appears that people's perceptions are quite different. This doesn't look close to my tongue in cheek rant from earlier in the week.

Read about Pelusa the purple polar bear right here.

CBC News: U.S. releases photos of Saddam's sons I guess it looks like Uday and Qusay, but they're to beat up (and dead) to identify.

The plant from Mexico is called Salvia and is stronger than LSD and legal. How much do you want to bet the legality thing gets tossed ASAP?

The Biggest Tongue In The World !!! Elliot said, "Now if he could breathe through his ears he'd be every woman's dream." Bad Elliot, bad.

Susan Smith, the murderous mom, has removed her personal ad from WriteAPrisoner.com. Sorry Richard Ramirez. You'll have to find another whackjob to communicate with.

CBC News:Pickton heads to trial on murder charges
Not like this is a big surprise at all.

One evening a family brings their frail, elderly mother to a nursing home and leaves her, hoping she will be well cared for. The next morning, the nurses bathe her, feed her a tasty breakfast, and set her in a chair at a window overlooking a lovely flower garden. She seems OK, but after a while she slowly starts to lean over sideways in her chair. Two attentive nurses immediately rush up to catch her and straighten her up. Again she seems OK, but after a while she starts to tilt to the other side. The nurses rush back and once more bring her back upright. This goes on all morning. Later the family arrives to see how the old woman is adjusting to her new home.

"So, Ma, how is it here? Are they treating you all right?" they ask.

"It's pretty nice," she replies. "Except they won't let you fart."

As you can see, we are an equal opportunity employer.


We had a party to celebrate the design of a new site and our continued success in the online sports betting industry. What does that mean? That means drunken nerds. Pictured above is my pal Elliot beginning what turned out to be the first and, according to him (yeah right), last drunk he's ever had. Elliot drank oodles of booze and claims the trouble truly started with Tequila shooters. No doubt. As Elliot and Seija (who thankfully was absent) got married on Saturday, I'm sure the stress from the upcoming nuptials were a part of Elliot's letting loose.
Below you will find links to more pictures of Elliot's fun time:


Congrats to Elliot and Seija on their wedding. Thanks to Jackson for walking Elliot to the bus stop after the cruise.

Moselle K, a former co-worker now living in England, sent me a link to her site, Modek.com. She's taking photos and posting them like mad.
Nice work Moselle. Stay in touch!

The official site for Spider-Man 2 is up!

This weekend Carol and I drove the 450+ kilometres to see the property that Leslie and Ron have recently purchased. The property is one acre perched precariously on a hillside overlooking the Shuswap lake. They've done some building and bought a trailer. We thought it might be a nice getaway.

Carol and I drove for 5 hours after work on Friday through Merritt Mountain Music Festival traffic to get to the place. In Kamloops we realized we had not brought Moosh's collar so we had to buy a her a new one. We arrived at La Vista Nueva at around 10:30pm very tired. Pretty much as soon as we got there we realized that we had forgotten our suitcase full of clothing in our bedroom at home. Leslie told us that there's no power as the electrician is lazy and unreliable and didn't do the job he said he would, so that means, no electric chemical toilet. You got it: here's a shovel, dig a hole and shit in it. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the water from the well is not drinkable. Anyway, the sadly uninhabitable, leaky, mold-ridden trailer is just there for looks I guess. All four of us had to sleep in the shed.

"No phone! No lights! No motorcar! Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe it's as primitive as can be!"

On Saturday morning we drove around Salmon Arm like idiots looking for some clothes to buy. Carol and I both got some new duds and then headed back into the woods. I contemplated a motel room a couple of times. Upon our arrival back at the ranch we saw Ron digging up a drainage pipe where the trailer, now moved, is to live. The girls were sent away to the building supply store for, of course, building supplies. What about me? Rather than sit and take it easy reading a book as I had dreamed I assisted Ron with ditch digging and pipe extraction (which was not as easy as we thought it would be) in the sweltering heat... in my new clothes. The blisters pain as I write as there was only one pair of gloves and I didn't have them. Upon completion of that task (I almost passed out twice from the heat and I swear Ron had a heart attack) Ron put the piece on the pipe and we backfilled it. All that was left was backing the trailer into place then we could go swimming.

Not so easy, the trailer did not want to go into place (this took at least 2 hours), then when it did finally go in straight the wiring gave out to the hydraulic lift and we couldn't get the trailer off the truck. After a few hours of futzing with our heavy duty jack (they didn't have one), and me trapped inside the trailer due to the inability to open the door as the deck was too high with the trailer on the hitch, we got the thing off the truck. We then had a nice dinner of extremely burned pork chops, sat and grumbled for an hour (it was too late to go swimming) and then went to bed.

On Sunday we had a nice drive home in the heat and traffic passing the murder investigation you see below.

All around, a great weekend. La Vista Nueva? No. Not right now. More like shanty on the Shuswap. I'm sure it'll be an awesome spot in years to come. I think we went too early. I'd love to go back when there's a place for me to plug in my laptop, a comfy bed to sleep in and a toilet to pee into. ;)

CNN.com - France bans 'e-mail' from vocabulary - Jul. 18, 2003
The French are very protective of their culture and this is not a surprise at all. E-mail is an English word. 'Nuff said.
Thanks to Lance for the heads up.

Check out the Dictionary of Last Names.

BROWNE :
English, form of Brown, derived from common nickname applied to one brown, or dark red, of hair or complexion, principally the latter. A few Browns refer to the ancestor named BRUN 'brown,' but this was not a common forename in England after the Conquest in 1066. The explanation for several different spellings or even several different nicknames with the same or similar meaning ascribed to one country is that they arose independently in different parts of the nation due to differences in regional dialect.

In EBONICS: A slang dialect used by certain groups of the African-American community.

Yo, Big Daddy upstairs,
You be chillin
So be yo hood
You be sayin' it, I be doin' it
In this here hood and yo's
Gimme some eats
And cut me some slack, Blood
Sos I be doin' it to dem dat diss me
Don't be pushing me into no jive
Ang keep dem crips away
Cause you always be da man, G
Straight up.
Aa-men.

You can find this and many more translations of the most famous prayer in the world right here. Don't worry, I haven't gone militantly Christian on you (or Christian at all for that matter). I do, however, find it an interesting prayer. I did choose the ebonics translation first after all.

My friend Scott works at the store bearing this domain: www.dickslumber.com. It's a lumber store, not a penis taking a nap.

Bell equips trains with Wi-Fi access
I guess logging in on the West Coast Express with my wireless card and laptop is right around the corner.

I was off work sick yesterday. Damned sinuses. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming:


Check out the red banner on the lower left. If it tastes like that I don't want it. Who knows what that tastes like anyway?
Thanks to Lance for the picture which was shown by Jay Leno on the Tonight Show.

Remember those great 80's flicks like Better Off Dead, Karate Kid and Raising Arizona? I loved them. Now there's a site dedicated to those and many more 80's films. Cheick it out at Fast-Rewind.com

Goodbye!

AOL Cuts Remaining Mozilla Hackers

Bizarre Game Targets Women: Hunting for Bambi: Parts 1 & 2
Thanks to everyone who sent me this link.

KOZO the purple hippo shows you his thong.

Bill G just sent me this link from INTERNALMEMOS.COM. eBay = Nazis?

CBC News: No Yukon, P.E.I. on new maps of Canada
How much do you want to bet this idiotfest took place in Toronto? Where's Toronto, the apparent center of the Canadian universe? Bet that's on the map.
Either that or it was contracted out to a US company.

I was listening to some of those hideous clocks mentioned in the article below and remembered my friend Tim Young's Speak 'n' Spell. We used to spell dirty words on his.
"Now spell DOG. F-A-R-T ... that is incorrect."

HINT: To get the Speak n Spell in the link to work you have to turn it on. ;)

Here's a big collection of Talking Clocks. Honestly, I hate my clock radio. If it were to start talking to me, telling me to 'get up'... it would probably be flung out into the driveway.

The next car I have is coming equipped with The Trunk Monkey to deal with those idiot road ragers. Thanks to Kat T for the link.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Lightning hits preacher after call to God
Thanks to Bill G for the link.

He may be out of a job after the next election. Check out his resumé right here.
Thanks to Matt S for the link.

Here's one for Carol. Thanks to Pauly for the picture.

Man spits on cop, gets life in jail
Thanks to Matt S for the link.

Susan Smith, who killed sons, seeks pen pals. Remember her? How could we forget her crocdile tears after drowning here own babies? Anyway WriteAPrisoner.com has accepted a personal ad on her behalf. A link to her ad is here, but may not work as it looks like everyone is having a peek and crashing the server.

Fun is in here in Vancouver. (finally)

If you're a gamer like me, or should be, you can check out [ Video Game Trailers ]. There's some pretty funky looking stuff coming down the pike. More stuff for me to waste my time on.

Check out the Funny Billboards at Dribbleglass.com. Carol sent me a doc with some of these I had to find them all.

Have a toke. Yahoo! News - Canada to Sell Marijuana for Medical Use

Try this soon, before Google fixes its site:

1. Go to Google.com


2. type in (but don't hit return): "weapons of mass destruction"


3. Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, instead of the normal Google search button


4. read what appears to be a normal error message carefully.

Thanks to Chuff for the info.

The Stupid Store: Meat Scented Air Fresheners
Hey Carol! It's great for our Atkins diet.

Thanks to Rick P for the picture.

I guess this is the shoe the old woman with all the brats lived in.

Check out Neuroscience Art Gallery: Art by Psychotics.
It's interesting to see how one artist's interprtation of a cat changes as he decends into the psychosis of Schizophrenia.

Look! Just in time for the already sold out Toronto anti-SARS benefit concert!
Jean Chretien has a new gig as the latest guitarist for The Rolling Stones. I guess ex-Prime Ministers need something to do after they've ground a once fine country into the dirt.
Thanks to Pauly for the picture.

Kevin Chan of Fix8 Creative Media took some photos of a blaze that destroyed one of downtown Vancouver's heritage buildings. Here they are. Thanks Kevin.

CBC News: Klein pied at Stampede breakfast
You can watch some REAL video right here but no actual video of Klein getting decked.

Worth1000.com | Harry Potter Contest
Thanks to Matt S. for the link.

When we were in Victoria we went on John Adams' - Ghostly Walk around the city. John Adams (pictured above) is a local historian who's interest in ghosts has filled a book called Ghosts and Legends of Bastion Square. You can learn more about Mr Adams at his website, discoverthepast.com. If you want to check out the Ghostly Walks tour for yourself get you info here. It was really fun!

Our vacation is done for another summer. I'm back at work today, Carol is tomorrow and her sister Cathy has headed back to Dallas, TX. We had a great time. Here are some pictures I took on our trip.

Check out the picture (nothing unusual).

Now read this:

In Sweden it is a bit of a custom for the groom to be kidnapped and whisked off somewhere for his stag night, which usually lasts all day and all night rather than the typical British stag night where you all arrange it beforehand go out get drunk and hire a stripper.

The Swedes do it different.. The groom has no idea until he gets nabbed.. He might be dressed up in something crazy... and go do something funny...and then the fun starts!

This particular guy is a keen sailor and when he was kidnapped for his stag night they pasted a false "skippers-beard" on him and put him at the helm of a 60 foot yacht and let him be skipper for the day...

Much beer and fine food was consumed. But nothing... nasty happened to him at all... In the evening when they got back on land and were getting cleaned up for the night club... they all had a sauna as is customary in Sweden....

Imagine the grooms horror when he walked into the sauna where his naked buddies were waiting for him and then to notice that best mate number one had no pubic hair ...

neither did friend two ...
nor three ...
or four...

Now check out the false beard again...........


Pauly sent me this disturbing story with picture. UGH!

Top 10 Dog Names Moosh doesn't show up anywhere.

Check out BoYshiT. Weird factor 10, but funny all the same.

Yahoo! News - Zimbabwe's Mugabe receives massive pay hike
It looks like a lot of money, but it's not. However, compared to the rest of the country it's a FORTUNE.

What is it we got? Vancouver is hosting the Winter 2010 Olympic games! Congratulations to everyone on the bid committee. This ought to be fun. We needed a reason to fix the Sea-to-Sky Highway. I guess the Olympics is a great excuse. Woohoo!

Canada is 136 today! We went to the Maple Ridge City Centre for the flag raising this morning and I took a bunch of pictures. There were huge bithday cakes for Canada and it appeared to be crazy-old-lady-on-scooters-day. See here and here.