3 Things

First of all tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Ma, you have such a positive image that there have been attempts to corporatize your image. The first one is Mother’s Pizza. This chain of restaurants is back from the dead in Ontario and wherever else they might exist. I think the idea of naming them Mother’s is to evoke the image of well made, home made pizza.

The two other attempts at corporatization of Mom’s image are more sneaky. Wendy’s fast food restaurants have an image of (presumably) Wendy as a little girl. In it her collar on the left looks like an “M” and on the right it looks like another “M”. The centre is either a button or amulet that, as a circle, surely looks like an “O”. So there is this subliminal Mom in this corporate image of Wendy’s.

The other company that uses Ma in its corporate image, right now needs something positive. That company is cheating Volkswagen and maybe they foresaw it such a long time ago that we all know their VW emblem. This is trickier. Upside down their emblem looks like MA in a circle.

My old riding in Ontario, Kitchener-Conestoga, just had a bit of a scandal. Incumbent Michael Harris was ushered out unceremoniously by the Progressive Conservatives so new candidate Mike Harris Jr. can run there instead. This was all orchestrated behind the scenes by Mike Harris Sr. the former premier of Ontario. Look PCs, I know you’re all conservative and that, but, get a new name. I am imagining that someone will get my meaning wrong and instead change the party name to the Mike Harris Party.

I know the wounds still have not quite healed in astronomical circles after dumping Pluto as a planet. Still, I must suggest dumping Neptune as well. Hold on before you object because I have a point. Shouldn’t Uranus be the natural end of the solar system? Just think on that awhile.

Before you object too strenuously, might I say that Uranus was once the end of the solar system. William Herschel only discovered it in 1781 as a planet, even though in dark skies its light can be seen imitating a star. So until 1846(when Neptune was discovered), Uranus was indeed the end of the solar system.

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More Anecdotal Proof of Erich von Daniken

Does anyone remember my pseudo or alien accent post from many years ago? Here is a link. In it I showed (via Youtube) my alien accent that contains a smacked M (like a kiss), clicked N and a flatulated (my own word) P which is really the sound a horse makes that is not a whinny.

But recently I came up with a fourth consonant sound. It is a clip clopped L. Again this letter is only clip clopped at the start of a syllable never in the middle or end. This is because I cannot do it (maybe you can?).

Here is the sound on Youtube: clip clopped L accent . I am saying, “Lots and lots of little locks.”

And here are all four sounds together on Youtube: full alien accent . I am saying, “I like my nice pencil.”

And thinking about this all led me to a discovery. All 4 alien accented letters are consecutive consonants in our alphabet. Could they have been slipped into our alphabet due to contact with aliens who had this accent?

Then I thought of the coup de grace that made this all sure. They just hid these four consonants in plain view by stuffing them somewhere in the middle of our alphabet. Correction, not just in the middle of our alphabet but the exact centre. There are 26 letters in our alphabet. Those well versed in math are going to know that the 12th, 13th, 14th and 16th letters are as near to the centre that you are going to get.

Obviously there was alien collusion in this and it is likely that those aliens spoke with my full alien accent. There you go, Erich von Daniken. I just gave anecdotal proof for your Chariots of the Gods that said aliens have visited the world’s ancient peoples. That is the deep thought of today.

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The Duchess of Cambridge’s Revenge

In 2012 a paparazzo took a topless picture of Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge. This happened in France by a French magazine. The British royals have not seen France the same way since.

Just this week Kate gave birth to a baby boy. All week we have wondered what the name would be and we were not disappointed. The boy is to be known as li’l Prince Louis. And then I thought on it some more and realized that this was how Kate was going to get her revenge against the French.

Louis has a proud tradition in the French monarchy. From Louis the I in 814 onward there have been many kings named Louis. They range in nicknames from Louis the pious to Louis the fat. They got all the way to Louis the XVI until the French revolution and Napoleon took over the reins of French leadership.

Even still Napoleon was married to the 1st cousin once removed of Louis the XVII. Napoleon ended up in exile and Louis the XVIII was chosen to rule. They got up to Louis the XIX. Then a huge change happened in the monarchy and Louis-Phillipe became king. Then Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte became Napoleon III. The French monarchy sure did love the name Louis.

Finally in 1870, the French monarchy came to an end and France eventually became a true democracy. And true democracies often have disparaging views of royalty – leading to the 2012 pics and not respecting the privacy of the visiting British royalty.

By naming her child Louis, at last Kate managed to snub the French democracy and bring back memories of its hated monarchy. Well played, Kate, well played.

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Pop Music Naming Schemes

Cardi B has 13 songs in the top 100 on Billboard so let’s look at her name and where she got it from. Apparently her nickname in the hood was Bacardi but she couldn’t use this for trademark reasons. So she changed it to Cardi B. Just different enough not to infringe on anything. We at Many Rants are not so high minded and intend to steal this naming scheme for humour reasons.

The first alcohol I thought of to try changing was Jack Daniels. We could change it up to Daniels J. But that just seems like Daniels, J which could refer to many people in the Daniels family. So perhaps we could make it different with an apostrophe and one other change. How about Daniel’s Jay. So what is this bird of Daniel’s and will he be flipping it at us?

How about Nadian Club C? First of all, what is a Nadian? This of course refers to an inhabitant of Nadia. She might have all sorts of gut flora, etc., that could be inside her. Club is self explanatory (a group of anything might be called a club) and C could mean Sea where any wet innards could be called a sea.

Then there is my favourite of this naming scheme: Rince Igor P. Or Rinse Igor Pee. I’m more inclined to pressure wash Igor’s pee down the nearest drain than rinse it, but some might not be such a stickler for cleanliness.

This naming scheme reminds me of Jennifer Lopez’s: J Lo from about a decade ago. It is such an ingrained naming scheme that no one bats an eyelash at Jennifer Lawrence being called J Law. I am not, however, going to use this naming scheme on present or even stars of this millennium. I am going to use it on older stars.

Alan Ladd was a western film actor around the middle of the 20th century. Perhaps his parents wanted him to be forever youthful – because the J Lo version of his name is A Lad.

Robert Redford is a more recent actor who is still alive. I suspect his parents were big communist sympathizers. After all, if they predicted the J Lo shortening at his birth they might have noticed the Bob Redford shortening or B Red.

Sir Peter Ustinov was an English actor, writer and director. Of course his parents could hardly have foreseen his knighting, but they could have foreseen the J Lo shortening. His name becomes P U. His parents must have also realized this would be his name when using initials. How could you name someone the initials of 2/3 of pun?

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Hug an Oak Today

You don’t have to be one of those environmentalist tree huggers to want to hug an oak tree. Just as you would hug a soldier before they go off to war, you should also hug that oak for it might wage its own type of war.

It’s dangerous out there for North American trees. In my youth there would be dead trees all about in various places. They were stripped bare of bark and just had a light wood look to them. I was assured that all these trees were former elm trees. They had lost their lives to dutch elm disease. All across North America, these once mighty elms had died.

Then a few years ago in my city, the local government had to lay out a lot of cash to cut down all the ash trees. The emerald ash borer was killing all the ash trees and there was no hope for any of them. As a retardant we were cutting down ash trees ahead of the advance. Now I forget if the spread was coming from the east or going toward the east but North American ash trees are disappearing as the emerald ash borer spreads to the seas.

The next tree apocalypse species could be any of a number of species that makes its home in North America. Next could be the ironwood tree, the aspen tree or the oak. It could be the yew tree, the fir tree or the oak tree.

Only the oak tree fits in both sets. It’s name both starts with a vowel and it is three letters long. So, by using pattern recognition skills alone, I have managed to predict the future. I am going to go out on a limb here (see what I did there) and say oak trees are in dire circumstances. So hug that oak tree you have largely been ignoring and thinking will always be around.

Pattern recognition skills: is there anything that they can’t predict? Just please don’t look at all the failed science fiction predictions.

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Permapout

What is a poor, spoiled, rich kid supposed to do when they don’t get their way? The answer is: they eventually learn is to pout. Maybe Mommy or Daddy would be inflexible enough to stop this dead in its tracks. But Mommy and Daddy don’t raise rich babies – their servants do.

So in that pout the servants see their future with the family. Of course they strive to please the pouter at almost any cost. If it were in their control to give they would likely give the pouter intercontinental ballistic missiles. We’re lucky that this is not in the power of these servants to give.

Donald Trump has a permanent pout on his face. Growing up his servants must have given him almost anything he wanted. Maybe Donald had a bully problem. But he just pouted at his largest male servant.

“Fine, what do you want Donald?”

“I want you to let me beat you up and then you can beat up my bully. After you beat up my bully tell him that you’re saving him because Donald can beat you up. Which of course is the truth.”

The problem would thus be diverted. At least enough that Mommy and Daddy won’t have to hear about it.

Then Donald grew up? And began hanging around his fellow pouters at the Miss Universe and Miss America pageants. All these women were told that pouting made them more beautiful so they believed this about anybody. Thus they accepted the Donald as a beautiful man. To this day, beautiful women like Melania and Stormy Daniels find the Donald to be acceptable. Of course both women have made a lot of money off of him, too, so it’s possible it’s not the pout.

Now there are a number of theories as to why the Donald won the presidency. Some think it was Russian dealings, others think that it was his racism. I think that it was his pout. Most voters are parents as well and seeing Donald act like a little boy got to them when he pouted. Of course little baby must get his way.

So we have someone with a permapout that had gotten control of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This might have gone away with no problems in a couple more years. But there is another man who wields a permapout that also has gotten his hands on intercontinental ballistic missiles. That man is Kim Jong Un.

I’m not going to bore you with how Kim Jong Un pouted his way to power but it parallels the Donald’s experience. The pair of them have talked about getting together and talking ICBMs and nuclear weapons. In some circles this will be known as the Great Pout Off.

Let’s just hope that the servants that surround this pair somehow come up with a way that they both can look like they’ve won.

In the meantime, I suggest that the American voting public make themselves immune to pouters. Remember when you’re oldest kids pouted and so did your littler kids? You probably picked the side of the younger kids. And just like that, pouting isn’t always a winning position.

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Password Progression

For many years now, having a password hasn’t been enough security for anything. Instead, many of us started using passphrases such a long, long time ago.

And you know, I have been told for years that this just isn’t good enough. To protect yourself better, you need at least 50 characters or what is a complete sentence. And I bet that this is no longer secure enough, that in fact your passsentence needs now to be passsentences. 2 or three of these sentences strung together ought to be fine for the time being.

But you know where this is progressing. Secure passsentences are just going to become longer until they are up to the longest thing that a person can memorize easily. Soon passpassages then passmonologues will be needed for the sake of security. Then it will be a passchapter. Then it will be a whole passbook.

So like it or not, to be able to use these things with no mistakes, we’re all going to have to rely on computers themselves to be able to enter our long, long, passchapters and later still our passbooks.

Only a computer will be able to enter such monstrosities without a mistake for access to all the sites we need to use. So I think, today, we are at that juncture where we will have to learn yet another skill on our computers. That is using programs that will be able to enter our passbooks on sites and gain us access to certain goodies on the world wide web.

But still to use these programs, it will be necessary to have them password protected.

To me that just sounds like the whole progression just starts over again. And maybe, just maybe we’ll need a computer program to access our computer program that contains our passbooks. Which will, again, have to be enabled by a password.

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The Statutory Rape Generation

I was angered after hearing that the Millennial generation’s new cut off was being born in 1995 and not 2000. The whole point to being called Millennials is that certain important dates like graduation and schooling and of course births would be over the millennium. That is why this generation was called Millennials. And it’s an easy boundary to remember unlike 1995.

Well I found this offending site by The Center for Generational Kinetics that puts this new 1995 end date on Millennials. They say such enraging things about proponents of other generational boundaries – “frankly, a lot of people don’t do actual research, so they’re just guessing”.

Well I’m not going to do research and get sucked into their little trap. Instead I’m going to harp about the definition of “generation”. A generation is separated from another generation by the child/parent relationship. Of course there is no guaranteed age to be a parent. And this is going to have to ignore the fact that men can have children at age 60 – so we’ll focus on the women.

The average generation is about 25 to 30 years. All the social scientists wishing to define a generation err on the young side for parents. Presumably they mean by generation the difference between the first born’s age and the parents. You can see it quite clearly when we go through the generations given by The Center for Generational Kinetics.

The Baby Boomers were born in the years 1946 to 1964 or about 19 years, Millennials were born in the years 1977 to 1995 or about 19 years and Gen Xers were born in the years 1965 to 1976 or 12 years. WTF?! 12 years? That means the mother of this generation was 12 years old when she had her first baby. Which means she was likely impregnated at 11 years old.

Shame on you would-be-definers-of-generation! How could you? Maybe you were actually searching for a name for Gen X at long last. How about “The Statutory Rape Generation”? Is that your new idea?

Another simplification of generations would be the idea that the male parent is about the same age as the female parent. Which would mean that the new generation would have an 11 year old father as well.

For both sexes 11 years old is just barely into puberty. To be fertile it is unlikely that a mating between two 11 year olds would result in a baby.

Maybe Gen X ought to be called “The Unlikely Generation”. Or how about “The Improbable Generation”.

Thank you The Center for Generational Kinetics. You have introduced the idea of statutory rape in the generations. Even though I like a couple of the new names for Gen X, I am still ashamed of you.

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The Flatulator

Are you tired of your present love interest and wish to drive her away? The answer might be the flatulator. Are you immune to beans but want to keep up with your friends in the inevitable fart off? The flatulator can help. Do you wish to clear a crowded area? The flatulator might help you there as well.

The first thing about the flatulator is that it must be much smaller than a whoopie cushion because you don’t want others to know that you are faking flatulence. Yes, you will have to put it in your underwear to not allow people to know that you are faking it.

It should have a hose up to your hand where the squishable bulb that powers it can be triggered. You will have to hide this device from onlookers and most especially your intended victims.

And most importantly it should give off a vile scent – but not always. The spray that can be used should go off randomly but you should be able to select the randomness. It should be triggered between 1 out of 10 times and 9 out of 10 times. Thus you, the person who dealt it, won’t know if it has released it’s noxious scent or not. Farting just isn’t fun unless there is some form of Russian roulette with it.

Now that you have almost full control you can amuse your friends by farting in Morse code. Give people food that makes their faces scrunch up – like hot peppers or pickled anything. Then, when their faces are at maximum scrunch, release the “fart”. Sure some people might realize it’s you but most will blame the face scruncher.

Do you feel lucky? Set the randomness to 9 out of 10 smelly farts. I bet that spray is flammable. Just make sure the spray isn’t under pressure before doing this. Then, try to burn your farts with a lighter. It’ll look like a fart burn because everything flammable with that much surface area via atomizing is going to burn very quickly.

What if the top three reasons for getting the flatulator don’t work? What if your ongoing farts fail to drive away that annoying love interest. Well, if they can accept you with your farts then that means they will accept more annoying traits. Perhaps your relationship just needed to give you space to be yourself. Maybe she will accept you with all your other bad qualities, too.

You should now be the champion of bean night. No one will be able to fart as frequently as you do. If your friends deem stinky farts as somehow more manly, a 9 out of 10 success rate might work for you. Or if your friends prefer their atonal music without a scent, a 1 out of 10 stinky fart rate might be more in order.

And if your flatulator does not clear out a crowded area then I must remind you not to use it in an elevator.

The flatulator. Sold where all fine high tech whoopie cushions are available.

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You Have Rights But Maybe Not Car Driver Rights

Myself and a group of partiers were walking home after drinking one night. There was no place to eat on the way that was still open. Except a Wendy’s drive thru.

We knew that there was a hose that the cars drove over that alerted the staff that they could take an order. We found that black hose and stomped on it but nothing happened. We weren’t heavy enough.

But my sister had heels on and knew that they could make a lot of pressure on what they stamped on. She stomped on the cord with her heel.

“Welcome to Wendy’s. May I take your order.”

We all ordered. Then the Wendy’s voice said “Drive up to the window.”

We were drunk enough to make “Vroom, vroom,” sounds.

They didn’t initially notice us standing beside the window. They were busy making our order. Finally the one girl noticed us and asked us if it was we who had ordered.

We said, “Yes,” but the girl began to get irate.

“You’re not allowed to use the drive thru without a car!” she went on but finally we asked if we were going to get served. She said, “Just this once. Never come back without a car.”

I don’t know if any of us tried this trick again, just that I didn’t. Of course I’m not near a drive thru with heels most of the time.

I’ve heard of the Toronto police carding pedestrians if they felt they were not in the right area. This has been used as an example of racial profiling and I don’t blame the complainants. You see when I used to live in Toronto, sometimes I would walk miles from one section of town to another. I’m white and never got asked for ID or even got stopped by the police.

Oh I can see where the rationale comes from. NIMBYs would complain that, “I pay good money to be in a good area of town. I’m not going to sit idly by while ruffians from the bad side of town simply walk into my area.

But they’re ignoring the fact that there are cars in the poorer side of town, too. Any ruffian with a car can spend two minutes driving far out of their originating area.

And know, too, that the racially profiled aren’t all from bad parts of town.

In my present city of Kitchener, there is a proposal to build a pedestrian walkway over the expressway near Chandler Ave. Businesses want this because the Laurentian Power Centre is hard to get to from the one side. Some of the people definitely want access to this retail complex.

But Chandler Ave. is known as a lower class area with more drugs around. So NIMBYs are against this obvious improvement for the area. Again, cars make this NIMBYism moot because it only takes a few minutes to drive from one side of the expressway to the other.

Do people with cars not steal? Do people with cars not do drugs (and sometimes before driving)? Do people with cars not cause trouble?

A car is already a nice asset. There is no reason to give people with cars extra rights on top of everything. Drive thrus shouldn’t discriminate and neighbourhoods shouldn’t either. Down with extra rights for car drivers.

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