Driving across Canada can be extremely boring. If yoy want something to do while touring you can always check out these Big Things.

Our favourite big things included are the Dinosaur in Drumheller (Close to Jim and Jennifer's house) and the Hockey Stick in Duncan. Thanks to Bill G for the link.

Quotes from PROPHET YAHWEH: "UFOs and spaceships appear on my signal." and "Be advised! Yahweh and His Angels are superhuman beings, on other plantes who fly in spaceships!"

Alrighty then. Call me crazy but perhaps the "prophet" (who to me looks like a cross between the infamous Suge Knight of Death Row Records and Hadji from Jonny Quest who also had mystical powers) ought to look into either detox from whatever the hell it is he's smoking or perhaps go back on those meds that the nice doctor in the hospital prescribed the last time he was picked up by the guys with the butterfly net. The $7.95 per month to see this cuckoo pants summon spaceships just might be worth it. I must give him one thing though, at least he's sane enough to be using gmail rather than Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. However, I do sense a hint of paranoia on the News/Media Sign-up page: "After I receive your email, I will contact you back, very briefly, to make sure that you are who you say you are, and after verifying who you are, I will sign you up and send you your complete login information." The noise you hear whilst reading his website are thousands of cuckoo clocks all sounding at once.

CBC News: Officials keep close eye on water levels along N.S. south shore

Mom and Dad are fine. The picture in the above article is kind of funny though.

I got an email from Brian Liu of Global Television National News with Kevin Newman regarding the Willy Pickton trial's publication ban and bloggers. I guess I come up pretty high in Google for Pickton and Blog. I got the message too late in the afternoon to do anything about it but I sent him a note anyway. Here's what I said:

Hi Brian,
Darn I missed your email. I hope you got what you needed from someone else. I would be happy to speak to you about blogging whenever you'd like. If another opportunity comes up I do have some opinions about this particular issue. Mainly, I do understand the need for a publication ban to ensure a free trial for someone during preliminary proceedings. However, once a jury has been chosen the details should be public regardless of the issue. If jury swaying via media is a concern then sequestering is always an option. It's a tough question in this case as it is generating much public interest and there are the feelings of the victims' families to contend with, but people want to know what happened. Gomery is a different animal altogether where the population of the entire country are the victims, and it seems a little shady that the federal government would want to prevent that information from coming to light seeing as they are the preceived perpetrators of the crime.

Anyway, there's my rant. Thanks for thinking of me. Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner.
Mike Browne

CBC Nova Scotia - Flooding prompts state of emergency
I'm going to give Mom and Dad a call to see that all's well. Doesn't look good. Here's some more pictures from Tallships.ca, some from the fire department, the story in the Chronicle Herald and a story in MacLeans magazine.

Phil Spector, as seen in this article, also has shitty taste in personal hairdos. Looks to me like he's having some kind of ultra-strange Supah-fly slash Tim Burton style collision. I'll bet there's birds and a family of voles living in there. No doubt Jimmy Hoffa is somewhere in that tangled mess as well. Is there possibly an 'insanity plea' in the works? If there's not there should be. Obviously this man is in no way capable of understanding the charges against him. This has to be an accident. An no it's not a Photoshop job, sad to say. Why on Earth someone would set foot outside the hair salon with a do like that truly has me stumped. OMG, he's whacked.

Choose the enlarge option under the photo on the article. It will make your day. Thanks to Carol for the link.

Quoted as he sent it:

The famous Olympic skier Picabo Street (pronounced "Peek-A-Boo") is not just an athlete....she is a nurse currently working at the Intensive Care Unit of a large metropolitan hospital.

She is not permitted to answer the telephone,though. It caused too much confusion when she would answer the phone and say: "Picabo, ICU."

* (A good clean joke is hard to find these days)

Hello from Calgary! Yeehaw! We're here visiting Carol's family and bringing our little friend Kiera birthday presents for her sixth, consisting of a Walter the Farting Dog book (who happens to be headed for Hollywood) and a couple of pictures of Moosh, one of her most favourite dogs ever.

You can now change that boring old search only Google homepage to a more customizable portal like look. That's pretty cool.

Holy shit! After stressing out like mad we found a place to live. We rented a huge, beautiful one bedroom loft downtown from a very nice ESL teacher who's moving back to Nanaimo. It's an award winning heritage loft conversion at the L'atalier. The building is over 100 years old, the floors are hardwood (maple) laid down in 1908 and the celings are 16 feet high! A very creative work/live space and winner of 1995 Silver Georgie Award for excellence in design. The L'Atelier offers original timbers, glass blocks & maple flooring in the hallways & fabulous common roof top deck with 2 barbecues and 360 view. Un-freaking believable this place! The photo at left is just the hallway outside the suite. Wait until you see photos of the suite itself once we move in. We couldn't have asked for anything more suitable for us. Thanks again for all the good vibes you folks have been sending us.

Patently Silly - The Invention of Humor - presented by Daniel Wright
A solo operable see-saw? How pathetic is that? If a kid is so lonely that he or she can't find a see saw partner they should look into a bath.

A Hamburger Today: Special. Saucy. Since May 2005
burgers with ketchup, mustard - and opinion

A hamburger blog? Thank you... my life just got better. I love Hamburgers!

I'm going to hell...woohoo

Blogs are advertising: Elections B.C.

Mike Browne to Elections B.C. ... um ... Register this ... *puts up middle digit*

Argh! (note anything else I would have to say today would sound as though it were coming from from someone afflicted with a severe case of Tourettes Syndrome) We'll just stick with ARGH!

*** Worry not. I'm OK ***

It is Friday the 13th after all. Why shouldn't it be a shitty day. A hockey masked Jason is probably waiting until dark to pop out the space under the stairs and fillet me like a halibut...

PETA Kills Animals | PetaKillsAnimals.com

I'm not sure what the facts are but if what this website purports is true PETA's got a lot of 'splainin' to do.

Some words of wisdom from Treasure Island writer Robert Louis Stevenson kick things off:

"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."

and this bit of positivity from Shakti Gawain:

"What I'm actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. It's more for me than it is for you but sharing it makes me feel a little less like a hermit. No, I haven't started peeing in milk boxes or wearing kleenex boxes on my feet - yet.

To all the spamming type scumbags,
As someone who used to work in an industry known for it's spam and underhanded tactics (I've felt their vile sting) it's probably karma that my site would be thus targeted by dirtbags looking to peddle their penis enlarging pills, casinos and swampland real estate. So until I can come up with an alternative to the stupid assed Nucleus system's way of handling spam there won't be a way to comment. However, if you feel strongly about making a comment on a particular post just use the contact me link on the left. Thanks and sorry to all those honest folks who want to post and who's comments may have gone the way of the dodo bird in my mass deletion ragefest, but I've just spent an hour deleting spam and I can't do this every day.

UPDATE: Back already. Now when commenting you need to enter the numbers and letters on a radomly generated image. It works for me so far. Anyone who needs the plugin for their Nucleus CMS can get it right here.

Check out De-Animator at Kontraband. It's a cool flash game that allows you you practice your zombie hunting skills. Thanks to everyone who has sent me links to this.

Check out ols-master. It's a rather long flash movie about the evolving information construct. But is worth the download and the time. I feel like George Orwell. Get out the tinfoil for God's sake.

Thanks to Etrigan for the link.

Here's a picture I found of two farmers 'helping' a goat blow out the candles on your birthday cake. Thanks for being a loyal blog reader. Gracias. (Shit I missed Cinco de Mayo)

How to fold a fitted sheet
Finally, there's a method to folding a fitted sheet rather than just balling it up and cramming it into the closet. The internet is good for something other than pr0n.

What are the words to Louie Louie anyway? It looks like a school in Michigan isn't taking a chance on it's being obscene. They've banned the school band from playing it.

Time for all those bikers and rockers to change their tattoos. The number of the beast has been devalued from 666 to 616 after scholars got through reading some crappy old papyrus (aka King Tut's dinner napkin). Personally I think 666 is way cooler. The Iron Maiden song would still sound okay with 616 as the number, but it doesn't seem as strong or symmetrical somehow. Uh oh... Mike's overthinking things again. Another uh oh... Mike's talking to himself again. Must be the new and improved number of the beast burrowing it's way into my soul. Yargh! It burns!

Yes they are real and for sale: Bacon Strips Bandages
Only $4.95 USD for 15 'strips' in the neato tin seen above.