Read This Post or Get the F— Out

Recently decals were spotted in Alberta that showed the outline of that province and said, “Speak English or get the f— out”. While being decried as immoral, racist or unjust it was not considered illegal so the flea market vendor continued selling them.

Let’s take this message to the extreme. Let’s say everyone who could not speak proper English was forced to leave the province. Now this would of course include all infants and toddlers so Albertans wouldn’t be allowed to replace their population.

Now we just have to wait 120 years and all Albertans would be gone. The province would be up for grabs and although present day Albertans might wish the new colonizers would speak English, that is by no means a guarantee.

The journalist who prepared the article also found a couple of other attempts at racism that could be found in online t-shirts. However the online journalist was not thorough and did not say whether the t-shirts contained an outline of Alberta or something else fundamentally Albertan.

So the t-shirt that says “F— off, we’re full” could mean Alberta or any province or state.

Let’s assume it was Alberta, first. This province is suffering from problems with the oil patch and the price of oil. I wouldn’t be surprised if their population from last year was larger than the population of this year. They might have been full last year but this year they could definitely use some immigration to get them back to the full status.

For Alberta or any province or state, the loss of all immigration is liable to hurt the economy. House prices predicated on a growing population might halve if that population growth is not there. Do you want to own a house that is worth half of what you paid for it? Or more likely is half the price you are still paying for it.

Finally there is the slogan, “Fit in or F— off”. This is sheer stupidity. The overwhelming majority of people have idols and the overwhelming majority of these idols do not fit in.

The most obvious is the sporting world. Normal people can’t run a ten second 100 meters or less than a 4 minute mile. All basketball, hockey, football or baseball stars are outliers who don’t fit in. That is precisely why they are valued.

Movie stars are outliers in their acting ability or their charm. Musicians spent tons of time on things the rest of us find boring. They then use their talent to create songs that are not boring. Have you ever written a full book? Writers all have and this very act is an outlying one, successful book or not.

Do you still think an antihero might be able to fit in and not be an outlier? Hitler was a warmonger artist who wrote a book. Famous dictators all were given an outlying amount of power. This includes your Idi Amin, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, etc. Successful bank robbers all had an outlying amount of risk taking and planning ability.

And so called average guy, George W. Bush, did an outlying amount of damage when he was president of the US. His government misled the public to get into the war with Iraq. Is that normal? I say even he was an outlier. Or maybe just an out and out liar.

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Marta Stuart – Domestic Goddess

domestic goddess 6

Marta grows her hair to lengths that make Rapunzel jealous. Usually her hair is between 50 and 100 meters long. This is so she can wrap it into spools and use it as thread. She died it in to a spectrum with browns, blacks and whites on the side to make all colours of thread. So to all you lesbians who have been asking, it’s not a rainbow flag. She doesn’t play for your team.

Marta has ridiculously long and full eyelashes. This is so she can dust with them. To keep the dust out of her eyes, she dusts with the closed eye while the other eye does the guiding. So to all the people who thought she was winking at them, she was only preparing to dust.

Marta grows her fingernails to skewer lengths. Yes it is exactly what you expect. She impales shish kebabs and souvlaki with these nails and holds them (and her fingernails) over any open flame be it a fireplace, a natural gas stove burner or a barbecue. She quite intelligently grew more length in her fingernails so when her fingers become almost unbearably hot, the food is done. She only invites a maximum of nine guests when she is to make them dinner.

Marta wears a special mummy skirt. Not to be a mother (although you never know if that is in the cards) but more of a first aid thing. More than one of Marta’s suitors has gotten many scrapes, bruises and sprains on the same evening spent with her. Since they were far from any first aid kits, Marta had to sacrifice her skirt. So if you ever see Marta coming home with ill fitting male pants, you’ll know what happened. Men are such klutzes.

The shoes Marta wears indoors have broom bristles on the bottom. She happily skates around all day collecting dust and dirt in small piles that she eventually scoops into the garbage. Her friends are embarrassed for her and have offered to buy her a roomba on many occasions. Marta only answers with, “Roombas don’t do stairs!”

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I Want to Be a British Billionaire

First of all you might be thinking, ‘how is it even possible for a Canadian to be a British billionaire if you don’t move there?’ Oh I still intend to be a British billionaire even without ever setting foot in the United Kingdom.

Well then, what am I going to do to be a British billionaire? I don’t intend on affecting a pretentious accent when I make my billions.

You might wonder if I will try to style myself after the British billionaire Sir Richard Branson. Well actually I like his intentions of getting commoners to spend their life savings so they can go to space for a few moments. But I want to be a British billionaire not a British billionaire.

Maybe I wish to be of the country of origin for the English speaking world? But who cares about that – American aboriginals, Australian aboriginals, Maori, and almost every type of possible immigrant also made the English speaking world what it is today. No, that isn’t it.

Perhaps I wish to be closer to Queen Elizabeth, Prince Phillip and all their progeny. While that might be enough to keep my country in the British Commonwealth, that’s not enough for me.

I want to be a British billionaire because the British count differently. A billion in the British counting system is the equivalent of the North American trillion. If I were a British billionaire, I would be able to laugh at Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. All your wealth times 15, guys. And if that British billion were in British pounds, all that wealth times 30, guys.

And that is why I wish to be a British billionaire.

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Been Down for a Month

Unfortunately this site has been down for about a month. While that helped me in completing NaNoWriMo, any regular followers have been left with nothing. We’re back up to stay.

Besides this post, there are 5 other posts that the world has yet to see. I continued writing during the outage even though I was incapable of publishing. I should be back to my usual pace of a post a week by next week. Thank you.

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Man Eating Aliens: It’s Time

It’s a common expression; animals are fattened up before the harvest. You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it and you can bet your bottom dollar that the intelligent aliens checking us out have heard it.

Now would be the logical time for the slaughter of mankind and the alien feast. Obesity is at record levels world wide and, as more countries become capable of a North American lifestyle. they are going to eat. So now is the time for North America to be harvested. If there are really aliens that love eating partially intelligent species, that time has come. Because North Americans are learning more about food and what makes us fat. They are even investigating things like epigenetics to turn the power down on some of the genes that make us fat. Aliens, the time must be now.

But the longer that obese North Americans stay off the dinner plates of the superior aliens, the more I think aliens are almost exactly like humans in their choice of diet.

If the aliens are only middle class, I bet that they would choose abundant foods over good for you foods. Only the upper class will choose lean meat. But if the aliens are really more advanced than us, they’ve quite possibly raised the lower and middle classes to the position of the upper class. I’m betting the aliens want lean meat, rich in protein and low in fat.

I think the aliens were responsible for that light bulb moment that Charles Atlas had. 98 pound weaklings have too little meat on their bones to be tempting to our alien harvesters. Charles Atlas on the other hand would probably be considered a feast by the aliens.

So weightlifting culture has grown. From the Mr. Universe pageants to Arnie, Sly, Lou and Mr. T becoming household names, those upper class aliens are preparing for a harvest. Soon there will be a tipping point in the number of weightlifters and at long last the alien farmers can eat.

Protein your name is weightlifter.

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Never Trust Anyone Under 30

Do you remember that old refrain, “Never trust anyone over 30”. Maybe you don’t but I’ll bet all baby boomers and some gen Xers (like me) certainly do. This is the credo that brought drug culture to a very large proportion of the young ever since it was uttered. Age warfare was also a big result. This separated the baby boomers from their parents.

The Who line, “Hope I die before I get old,” gets used in My Generation. And it was common to discuss the ‘generation gap’ when the baby boomers were young.

Imagine the irony, many years later as the baby boomers themselves came to the age of 30 and then passed it. This was not lost on a baby boomer centred show called “30 Something” which was squarely aimed at the aging baby boomer.

The baby boomers continued to age. Now the lead baby boomers are inflating the amount of people who are officially retired.

Millenials are the generation under 30 years of age. For years they have been struggling to get any job at all and now the ones who did get employed still make little money. Baby boomers and (yes I’ll admit it) gen Xers seem disinclined to hire millenials for any type of monetarily rewarding jobs. The new refrain seems to be, “Never trust anyone under 30”.

There’s good news for all the generations. Metformin might be the first drug discovered that can slow the aging process. It works on some animals and has been given the go ahead to be tested in humans. Yay! Maybe we’ll all live longer.

Oops! Sorry to have foiled your plan millenials. Waiting for the older generations to die off may take a few more years than you expected.

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what Famous Pickup Lines Really Say

I’m sure the ladies will be told by their elders that the pickup lines that are served up to them, actually say more about the guy that used them then they say about the lady.

But this site intends to be much more specific. We are going to look at 5 of the most over the top pickup lines and say exactly what the lines say about the guy who used them.

1. “Is that a mirror in your pocket because I can really see myself in your pants?” This pickup line is the favourite of male cross dressers everywhere.

2. “You with all those curves and me with no brakes.” He’s telling his target he’s reckless so she will have to provide the birth control and he probably thinks of condoms as the brakes he won’t use.

3. “Is it hot in here or is it just you?” He’s basically saying that he’s not hot – just like the rest of the people in the room.

4. “You know what would look great on you? Me.” He’s already decided which sex position he’s going to use.

5. “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” He’s got a thing for fallen angels. Did you hear that Lucifer?

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Making ‘Black MIDI’ White

Black MIDI is music, impossible to be played by human hands, on say a piano, because it is so note dense. Indeed the fact that it is so note dense means if these songs were written with normal music notation on a few sheets of paper, the sheets would be black with notes. That’s where the term black comes from.

With MIDI it is possible to program many, many notes so some black MIDI compositions play a million notes over the time of a 4 minute song. Read this excellent article on the subject and even hear some of these compositions.

But there is sort of a competition amongst the black MIDI composers to play the most note dense songs, or the blackest of the black MIDI. I have an idea to get myself into the middle of this competition.

First of all, I am a supporter of fat chords as I said in this article, so I am a bit of a fan of black MIDI.

Bends are allowed in music. A bend will play the infinity of notes between two different, in tune notes. Your ear won’t hear all the gradations possible but it will hear a lot of them. So bends allow a huge number of new notes.

Even fat chords don’t play the whole chromatic scale. But in the interest of blackest MIDI, I think we ought to use chords that do use the whole chromatic scale.

But if I want all the new notes I’ve added to black MIDI, won’t a machine that plays them be expensive?

Well excuse me if I take my $1.50 to the laundry room and dry some clothes. The white noise of the dryer includes all those extra notes from bends and the fattest chords. That can be the basis of the song and the clothes flopping around can be the melody.

I have now written one of the blackest of all black MIDI songs. I challenge anyone to make a blacker song. Or more of a white noise song -your pick.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars

The inhabitants of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars called their planet Barsoom. For all my life, I just assumed that Burroughs had just made this name up, out of thin air. Having looked over the name again recently, I now think not.

Barsoom quite obviously contains the letters of the name Mars. With three letters left we can now see what Burroughs meant to hand down to his readers. The three letters left are B, O, and O and can only make up one English word : Boo! Sadly it’s too late to make this a Hallowe’en post.

I think Burroughs didn’t want us to boo Mars. Even in Burroughs time there was the thought that Mars could be in humanity’s future. So I think he meant Mars, boo!

The only successful previous novel to deal with Mars was H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. ‘Mars, boo!’ fits here because Wells chose to scare humanity with a Martian invasion. But that wasn’t what Burroughs offered up in his science fiction.

Barsoom had more than one intelligent race. Some Barsoomians were good and some were bad. But what John Carter, the hero, battled again and again was the propensity of Barsoomians to make each other into slaves. Slavery was Burroughs bugaboo (do you like my use of another word that has boo in it?)

When Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a series of ‘Mars, boo!’ stories it was to scare us from being a society of slavers. What an excellent use of fear.

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NaNoWriMo the Fourth

It’s Hallowe’en and the countdown is on to the witching hour when NaNoWriMo begins. Will I be brave enough to set some words down at the break of midnight? Or will I choose to sleep fitfully, knowing a scary 1 667 words are necessary for the first and every day of November till I have completed the challenge?

I know what my regulars are thinking. There just isn’t much tension in NaNoWriMo because I have completed the challenge successfully, 3 times before.

Yes, I bask in the kudos of the last three outings and my eventual success. But wait. This year is different. What I intend to finish are three novellas which should be able to total 50 000 words. There is only one problem. I have already written the first novella some years ago. So I’m not sure that 2 novellas are sufficient to make the 50 000 words. So, again this NaNoWriMo Eve, there is tension and uncertainty.

And yes, for the third time in 4 NaNoWriMos, I am doing the challenge incorrectly. Three novellas make a book, not a novel. Ah well. What follows is my reasoning.

When I first discovered NaNoWriMo, I only heard of the 50 000 words in 30 days. Even though Novel is right there in the title I thought (and was encouraged by my sister Laurel), that the challenge was very much the same as when doing a book of short stories. Only after doing the challenge successfully for those short stories, did I hear about Camp NaNoWriMo and its varied goals to be accomplished.

Even if I knew about Camp NaNoWriMo I might still have opted to do the challenge in November. Why would I try such shenanigans? Well it is quite simple. I have come up with a series of stories which will span 6 books. Two of them are books of short stories that have already had the first draft done through NaNoWriMo. One is this year’s attempt at three novellas (The Invisibility Trio). And three books will be novels. The Interstellar Flit which I have already done the first draft of, and my next two years of entries in NaNoWriMo will be novels. So fully half my books are the accepted novels to be done during NaNoWriMo.

Taking after my first collection of short stories in the series, Fabrications, I have decided to name the six book series The Fabricated Series.

That is all. Or perhaps I should say that will be all in a few years, when my full series is finished.

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