Daily Archives: May 6, 2006

The Next Clay Aiken

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Some kid named Andy, covering the Leonard Nimoy version of “If I Had a Hammer.” I shit thee not.

Kid woulda kicked Clarkson‘s ass, too.

Okay, fine. Take your bloody video down. Use the world’s most powerful communication tool to … keep things to yourself.

Whatever.

I’ll post this instead! So there, nyah!

Tremble, mortals! The Mighty God of Thunder has lost his magical hammer and embarks on his quest for a new one – at the local DIY store…
Posted by Amputee Chicken. I want to know what happened to Thor’s legs…is that why he needed the goats?

And if you fancy a bit of karaoke, click on the above link for a nice Moog-tastic accompaniment. Lyrics here:

If I had a hammer
I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening … all over this land,
I’d hammer out danger
I’d hammer out a warning
I’d hammer out love between all of my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

If I had a bell
I’d ring it in the morning
I’d ring it in the evening … all over this land,
I’d ring out danger
I’d ring out a warning
I’d ring out love between all of my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

If I had a song
I’d sing it in the morning
I’d sing it in the evening … all over this world,
I’d sing out danger
I’d sing out a warning
I’d sing out love between all of my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

If I’ve got a hammer
And I’ve got a bell
And I’ve got a song to sing … all over this land,
It’s a hammer of justice
It’s a bell of freedom
It’s a song about love between all of my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

Et tu, Shatner?

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Proof positive that rap is nothing more and nothing less than verse delivered in a particularly emphatic style. If you read some of the best ancient Greek verse in the original you can see that it would fall naturally into these kinds of rhythms. And here we have a selection from Shakespeare that seems to work pretty darn well. But really, whodathunk that the evidence for this scholarly theory would come from Great Canadian Celebrity the Shat?

Your HandyDandy Rapalong Guide

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

PSA: How to Survive a Cougar Attack

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How to survive a cougar attack

I have no idea where that image came from, but it’s an invaluable warning. Click here for a more detailed version. Not all cultures are familiar with the terminology “cougar” but I assure you that you know the type. Think Joan Collins as fortysomething divorcee, only without the fame, career, or money. Think leopard-print halter top over pressed jeans. Think expensive bag and shoes, fruity, mild-tasting cocktails with a nonetheless lethal kick, eg Cosmos. Really old cougars drink rum & diet coke, and would drink it straight from the bottle if it came like that.

The natural habitat of the cougar is the bar rail, just before closing time, and they can often be found at Dicks on Dicks, the Roxy, and anywhere with an Eighties night, where they will try not to show they know the words to every song.

While Vancouver is a known cougar-friendly habitat, South Oregonians are taking the situation into their own hands.

Sally Mackler, wildlife chairwoman for the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club, said she’s sympathetic to residents who’ve had run-ins with cougars, but rural residents have to learn to deal with the risks.

“It’s a UFO, Elvis-sighting kind of thing,” she said. “Cougars haven’t killed or attacked anyone locally.”

Yet.

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Operation Double-Double: The Bootcamp

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Candidates are learning about land mines, hostage Operation Double-Double operative operatingsituations, nuclear and biological attacks and medicine in developing countries.

If chosen, they'll be offered a six-month contract in Afghanistan.

Helluva bootcamp program for a job slinging crullers and coffee.

In early March, Tim Hortons announced it would be opening a Kandahar branch of the popular coffee-and-doughnut chain. Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan had lobbied for the move for weeks…

The 2,300 Canadian soldiers around Kandahar can line up at the converted trailer for a familiar taste of home:  timbits, cookies and double-doubles.

The first Tim Hortons doughnut shop was opened by its namesake, hockey player Tim Horton, in Hamilton, Ont. in 1964.

Horton died in 1974. His partner, Ron Joyce, later sold the chain to U.S.-based fast food chain Wendy's International, which spun part of the company off in a share offering earlier this year.

And here is the original announcement of Operation Double-Double.

Go get 'em, eh?

The C Factor: China begs its citizens abroad to stop being so, you know, Chinese

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Chinese VisaSpitting on a Vancouver sidewalk is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $110, as several people of both sexes have lately found out, greatly to their surprise. Our Chinatown is large and busy and very, very Chinese, so to discover that something so iconically Chinese is actually banned is a bit of a culture shock to many. It looks like a Chinatown. It smells like a Chinatown. But, according to the new policy of enforcement, the goal is that it won't feel quite so much like a Chinatown anymore when you walk around in sandals.

Thank god.

"Paved with open oysters" was Dickens' verdict on the sidewalks of New York, for much the same reason. Just today I saw two men and one woman blowing their noses onto the sidewalk (quite a trick and, while I appreciate the dexterity and practice it must take to master, punishable by an equally stiff fine praise be to god). And not a cop in sight! That's $330 lost to our public coffers. I'm thinking of working up a Huggy Bear Hug it out bitchbusiness model based on ratting out the snotlings, but am not sure if it should be commission-based per incident or if we could work out some sort of pay-by-volume-of-bust deal, like with drug informers.

I could be the Huggy Bear of mucus!

In the meantime, the Chinese goverment at least is trying to teach its people that carrying certain Beijingoist qualities overseas, particularly to snotty old Singapore, is not the greatest make friends tactic the world has ever seen. Much likeChinese Tourists in London the website set up to teach Americans how to behave abroad, there's a new initiative to teach the previously-isolationist Chinese how not to be loathed when travelling. I mean, when travel abroad was punishable by death, it stands to reason not many people were able to avail themselves of the opportunity, so we've got a billion newbies hawking away on planes and smoking up a storm in oxygen tents worldwide, to say nothing of trying to scam the other tourists.

The daily reported that Wong and Sum cautioned Fan, who possessed an identification showing he was ordained as a monk, that Malaysia was not a place for bogus monks to deceive the public for donations and his act had tarnished the image of Buddhist monks.

Naturally, the government realizes that there will be lots of tourists coming to Beijing for the Olympics, and they're prefer if the Chinese weren't as Chinese for that either, so the government is training the actual residents of the city to behave as if they were travelling abroad. Easier than explaining your culture to a mob of foreigners, I guess, at least in countries where they're already conditioned to obey stupid, culture-eviscerating orders on a daily basis.

There will be a black market in spittoons, mark my words!

Beijing has launched a campaign to make its citizens more "civil" in the run-up to hosting the 2008 Olympics. Games organizers have repeatedly said the city needs to teach its people to stand in line, stop spitting and littering and generally be better mannered.

I just hope there's a section in there about bears and cellphone cameras…