Words of wisdom from Wal-Mart cashier

     We were checking out some items at Wal-Mart (which I usually don’t like to do, those cheapo corporate bastards with those nasty little smiley faces and-) and we stood in the back of the “ten items or less line.” With fourteen items, naturally.

     A worker put the barrier right behind us just as we got in line. (Made it!) And the older woman at the cash said she hadn’t had a break for five hours.

     “Oh, we’ll go in another line, then,” my empathetic mum said.

     “It’s okay! It’s okay,” said the cashier. My mum continued to try and make her job as easy as possible.

     “I don’t mind working hard,” the cashier said, “it’s just when nobody appreciates it and steps all over me. I don’t like it when people don’t respect me and are rude and mean. You’re very beautiful. It’s just how we were raised- to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I just wish people would realize that.”

     I do, too.

Woman Who Missed Doomed Air France Flight Dies In Car Crash

Saturday, 13 June 2009

It's the kind of story that makes you wonder about the nature of fate.
Johanna Ganthaler and her husband Kurt must have been breathing more than just a sigh of relief last week. The couple had been on vacation in Brazil and they were running late. Despite their best efforts, they missed the plane that was supposed to take them back to Europe, leaving them feeling frustrated.

It was a frustration that turned to grateful amazement - the jet that took off without them was Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people onboard, including a former Guelph resident.
The Ganthalers wound up taking an alternate flight back and arrived safely. They were driving home, when their vehicle veered off the road in Austria and into an oncoming truck.
Johanna, who had managed to avoid dying in the plane crash, was killed in the collision, while her husband was seriously injured.
It's not clear what caused their vehicle to lose control.
Meanwhile, the search for the black boxes continues in the depths, with the help of a nuclear submarine equipped with sonar. Time is of the essence - the pings from those data recorders will stop next month.
Forty-one bodies have now been recovered from the crash site. Authorities hope to use DNA to identify the remains.

Information from: CityNews.ca, http://www.citynews.ca

Suicide committed yesterday by plastic idol

     Well-loved idol, Barbie Mattel, has been found dead after crashing her pink plastic convertible into the swimming pool yesterday afternoon. G.I. Joe and his authorities have ruled the case a suicide.

     T.O.D. lays undetermined due to the chemical plastic burns suffered from the chlorine.

     Friends and neighbours (Theresa, Kelly, Ken) claimed to authorities that Barbie had been dependent on Easy Bake Oven cupcakes for quite some while, causing her to go into debt. Her Dream House  payments were also lagging, stated landlord Mr. Potato Head; and she lost her job as a veterinarian soon after due to the animals kept chewing on her limbs. She obtained brief employment from Ken for work as his secretary, but quit a few days afterwards when she realized she was only hired because of her Barbie Limited Edition Stamp located on her lower back and not for her education at the prestigious TRU (Toys R Us).

     After quitting her job, neighbours say she spent most of the day sitting on her couch while watching the TV sticker- something she also felt failure with, sources indicate, due to her unbendable legs.

     Barbie had attempted suicide in the past. “Once, Barbie hid in little Sarah’s birthday cake pan… she got to the point where Sarah’s mom actually put the pan in the oven, with Barbie still in it,” says Theresa, close friend. The smell of burning rubber alerted the family of Barbie’s condition, however, and she was rescued soon after.

     Authorities conclude that Barbie’s plastic emotions most likely became too much to handle, and she decided to leave the world the same way she came into it: clothing, accessories, and baggage included.

the keys to happiness

 

What if the keyboard were a person?

He’d have to be pretty tough. And wordy.

I don’t know what’d be worse: the fact that I’d be hitting his face whenever I replied to an email, or the fact that I just leave him lying about to watch me while I change.

It’s not the changing part that worries me, just that he’d ejaculate ctrl and fn and alt all over my computer screen and it’d all slip down my facebook page and leak in all his crevices and I’d have to clean him myself using those aerosol spray-can computer keyboard cleaners. It’s just air in there, really, isn’t it?

BETRAYAL. Every time I stroked my cat or played guitar hero or strummed my fingers on my desk- oh god, right in front of him- I’d feel guilty and bombarded by my faithful conscience.

Or, worse, I’d tie my shoelaces and feel entwined and use my cell phone instead of my computer just to avoid breaking up with his @s and &s.

Those up and down and right and left arrows I’d miss, though.

Multiple Personality Disorder is defined as: “A highly disrupted psychological disorder in which a person exhibits two or more personalities, each functioning as a distinct entity.”

Is ^ an entity? Are H and U and Q and Y? { is distinct and ( has personality on the inside. Multiple fingers touch multiple keys and even in pressing just one it seems to multiply; onscreen.

I need him. I really do need him. I can’t eat feeds or breathe html or thrive off the ohs of Google without him.

In the end, I just can’t deny... he’s totally my type.

Happy 2009

 

     New year, new hopes, new dreams, new opportunity. Seize this oncoming year, and make it the best you possibly can. Start anew, be spontaneous, do something you've always wanted to. It's your year, spend it at will! Most of all, make it a great one.

Look forward to writing more in 2009 :)

Recipe: Holiday Spirit

 

Ingredients

-3/4 cup tinsel shavings

-2 peppermint candycanes, chopped

-1 cup snow, melted

-pinch cocoa powder

-handful fake snow

-3 reindeer hairs

 

Directions

1. In a blender, mix the melted snow, chopped candycanes, and tinsel shavings on "high" setting until consistency is smooth throughout
2. Pour slowly into mixing bowl, dropping in reindeer hairs continuously
3. With a large sized whisk, toss in the cocoa powder and stir until syrupy
4. Put in oven at 0 degrees for twelve days, or until mixture no longer resembles anything
5. Pour into individual mugs (preferably, with patterns of holidaylike themes applied), garnish with fake snow
6. Throw mugs into magical Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa cloud of joy, and bask in holiday spirit

Disclaimer: Do not attempt to actually do this. It is for entertainment purposes only. May have side effects of eggnog head, tinsel mouth, frostbite, bah-humbugitis, or bad sense of style in sweaters.

Have a happy consumerism-free holidays, folks.

Enjoy the boom of greeting card and wrapping paper businesses, and the sentimentality of traditions that no longer apply to modern life.

But really, have a good one.

In the future...

 

[In the year 2000] no Mosquitoes nor Flies.  Insect screens will  be unnecessary.  Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated.  Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams.

-The Ladies Home Journal, December 1900

 

[In the year 2000] etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

-The Ladies Home Journal, December 1900

By the year 2020, five per cent of the world's population will have emigrated into space. Many will have visited the moon and beyond.

-Weekend Magazine, July 1961

[Our children] will get pills to make them learn faster. We shall be healthier, too. There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness.

-Weekend Magazine, July 1961

[An English scientist] believes that it will be enough to dig a hole of several kilometers and there find the heat needed by all the industry. The water in such a deepness will be so hot, that all the machines in the whole world could be powered by it. [In the year 2000].

-Pressburger Zeitung, March 1922

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

-Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."

-Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

 

"Self-operating [vacuum] cleaners powered by nuclear energy will probably be a reality a decade from now."

– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955

Democracy will be dead by 1950.
-John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of The Future, 1936.

 

And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam
-Newsweek, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s.

 

A 1930s fashion prediction for the year 2000, by fashion designers: