From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: The War! I am mentioning... The War! Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:50:38 +0000 [I wrote this two weeks ago, while on my way to Ottawa] Dean Lenort (dean.lenort@att.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I have had Krispy Kremes and White Castles in the same day for the > > ultimate eating experience here in the United States Of Fast Food. > > While those may be the penultimate items in the Pyramid of Fast Food, they > do not represent the best of what America has to offer when it comes to > truly horrific dining. No, see, I was talking about yummy stuff. The post where I mentioned liquamen was where I was talking about horrible stuff. I try to keep the two categories of food from touching, because otherwise, they're both ruined. Know how when you're a kid, and your mashed potatoes touch your French Fries, they're both ruined? Well, my palate is a thousand times more sophisticated than that, and getting liquamen on my White Castles is definitely a means of ruining both. I love White Castles, and White Castles love me. > The experience of which I speak is of course that of eating a Lucky Dog > purchased from a Ignatius Reillyesque character while in the heart of the > French Quarter at some ungodly late hour during Mardi Gras. And yes you > have to get the chili although I suppose I'll let you pass on the cheese. > > Until you've taken this ultimate step in Dangerous Dining I will forever > consider your efforts to be second hand at best. > > Prior to eating a Lucky Dog in the manner I've described you might want to > consider warming up by eating the breakfast special at the Westward Ho in > Las Vegas, a challenge in its own right, but not on par with doing the Dog. Someday I hope I'll get around to posting my big photo essay showing what happened when I got the World's Largest Hot Dog (75 cents) from Westward Ho. The bun was squashed flat beneath this horrible soggy boiled all-fat two-pound hot dog, and I assumed that if I added relish and chili sauce that might make parts of it edible, and wow was I wrong. It was one of the most revolting experiences of my life. And although it was not purchased from an Ignatius Reillyesque character, I think the woman who sold it to me was Charles Nelson Reilly in drag. -- K. The hotel gives you a coupon for one of those hot dogs for FREE if you sign up to stay in that dump for a few days. I don't know if they throw you out if you refuse to eat the awful thing. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Apparently Canada is afraid of meat now... Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:52:01 +0000 [I wrote this two weeks ago, on my way to Ottawa] talysman (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > -> Hiding food in luggage is easier to pass off as ignorance when caught, > -> although it would have been difficult or embarrassing to explain why a > -> person would transport sausage in their underwear. The 'sniffer' dogs > -> are well trained to react to the smell of sausage, cheese and other > -> contraband foods whether it is in luggage, underwear, or in the loose > -> sleeves of a shirt with tight cuffs. > > now THAT I don't believe. > > how on earth could you train a dog to notice and react to the presence > of nummy foods? I know we all know dogs are too stupid to be trained in any way, but they have to use them, because cats are too smart to be trained in any way. > although I should note, for the record (in case anyone tries to visit > me) that I consider sausage to be somewhat less nummy if it's been > transported via underwear, coddled next to some guy's slim-jimmy. You're making an assumption. It's possible that the reason the guy got caught with the sausage in his underwear is that he was wearing his underwear on his head. (That keeps the sausage fresher.) > I should mention that the funniest airport food incident was when my > mother decided she needed to take a 50-pound bag of pinto beans and > two giant cans of pumpkin pie filling to england with her, because > apparently no one in england likes that stuff. the baggage searches > didn't seem to object to her *taking* the stuff to england, but boy, > the expression on their faces when they first tried lifting that > suitcase was priceless. > > oh, and the attempts to repack the suitcase were also funny. Especially because they never even noticed all the heroin hidden inside your mom's cans of pumpkin goop! > further security amusement from that episode: my mother had a 50-cent > sewing kit with her as well. security wanted to confiscate the needle > in the sewing kit, instead of just taking the entire three-inch-square > package. Of course, for serious sewing fans there are weird gadgets you can buy which are actually sharp sewing tools but disguised as jewelry. For instance, they make rings with little knife blades, and pendants shaped like discs with notches (where each notch conceals a tiny thread-cutter) are widely available. The question is, what do these people do to disguise their embroidery needles for airline travel? Tell you what -- let's do the experiment. We'll get on the plane, you'll pretend to collapse due to an imbalance of qi, and I'll yell "THIS MAN NEEDS ACUPUNCTURE, STAT! GET ME A NEEDLE!" Then we'll know. -- K. Maybe all those confiscated sausages were full of knitting needles. Just like the Halloween candy and Pepsi in Ottawa. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Children terrified by giant durian. Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:56:07 +0000 [I wrote this two weeks ago, while on my way to Ottawa] Jonathan Benney (jdb@student.unimelb.edu.au) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > [regarding a picture of a Taiwanese funny object, which is funny in > > several ways that the makers never intended] > > > > Is it a multilingual durian potty? > > Actually, it's not a toilet seat, it's from a durian-shaped children's > book (called "DURIAN"), There are durian-shaped children? And they can read? I would have thought that durian-shaped children would not be that sophisticated, because nobody would let them attend school. Unless they go to a special Stinky School with all the other durian-shaped children and that one kid I knew in fourth grade who had this translucent brown cloud following him around all the time. > all about how the two children are at first disgusted by the durian, > but gradually come to enjoy it. It's such a shame that children have to be exposed to such evil propaganda at such a young age. You think it's going to be a happy pleasant book shaped like a potty seat, but no, it's all about how YOU MUST LOVE DURIANS. WORSHIP YOUR EVIL OVERLORD, KING DURIAN. Didn't Hieronymous Bosch once do a painting of people in Hell being crushed by having a giant durian rolled back and forth over them all day? Or was that Gustav Dore'? Hmm, maybe it was Dore', because I remember that in one corner, there was a wacky robot quoting Oscar Wilde while eating a durian. And you could clearly see the string holding up the stench cloud coming out of the durian. And don't get me started on what you'd have to do to escape from Piranesi's durian warehouse. > (It gives the practical suggestion that freezing the flesh of the durian > can reduce the smell a bit and make it taste like icecream.) Yes, but only like durian-flavored ice cream. What a cruel trick to play on children. "Hey kids! It's time for delicious tasty ice cream that tastes bad!" Okay, I'm adding Taiwan to the Axis Of Evil. So now it's Taiwan, Nigeria, South Korea, and Tommy Hilfiger. I don't know why people think North Korea is evil -- they haven't done anything to hurt us yet, when South Korea gives all its citizens access to the other end of a vast spam pipeline that points at me. So if we nuked Nigeria, South Korea, and that bastard Tommy Hilfiger, that would probably cut down on spam for a day or two. Nuking Taiwan might be a bad idea unless we also drop a giant deodorant bomb on them to cut down on the smell of burning durians. -- K. And that's why I'm going to be President in 2004. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Kibo goes to Ottawa (part 1 of 3) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:04:00 +0000 Random notes on my vacation in that tiny little country known as "Canada". I just spent a week and a half in Ottawa. Ottawa and neighboring Gatineau are wonderful places, with beautiful scenery, fine food, plenty of museums, and people who are less frightening than Americans. I'd like to thank everyone who came out to entertain me from Ottawa, and Gatineau, and even Toronto. Not everything I saw or did is reported here. I focused on the most important stuff, like funny signs and traffic cones. This was written in haste, mainly on moving vehicles, and so I cannot be responsible for how horrible my writing is. Also most of the French accent marks are missing because I spent most of my time on the mostly-English side of the river. Day 1 (Saturday, March 1): You may recall that, the last several times I travelled on an airplane (before the U.S. Federal Government took over security responsibilities from the private rent-a-cops the airlines had used) I recounted all sorts of strange experiences with weird, incompetent searches. Well, I'm happy to report that today, they X-rayed my stuff much more thoroughly, but they did not grill me, wand me, or paw through my underwear. In other words, the people running the X-ray machine seemed to be much more attentive, and identified that my camera was just a camera and the batteries were just batteries, without me having to unpack everything. This time, they didn't even ask me why I'm all sweaty (they've hired people who understand that carrying luggage, while wearing extra layers of clothing because of the bizarre carry-on rules, can be hard.) You can only bring on one carry-on luggage item and one carry-on "personal item" (purse, laptop computer, coat draped over your arm) so if I want to get on with my suitcase, laptop computer, camera, and winter coat, I have to wear the coat, and shove the camera bag (about the size of a toaster) into the computer bag. So I'm dressed for Ottawa already (fleece pants over regular pants over underwear, winter coat over a heavy-weight hockey jersey over a normal T-shirt) and as everyone knows I sweat really easily all the time anyway, which made the old security guards suspicious because only someone with something to hide might perspire. The new guys just worried about what my stuff looked like on the X-ray, and didn't try to make any snap judgments about my future activities based on my moistness. Now I'm sitting at the gate waiting for boarding on my BOS->YOW flight. (All Canadian cities start with "Y", because Americans don't want their baggage getting accidentally routed to Canada, but it's okay if Canadian baggage gets mistakenly routed to YUL instead of YOW.) They've installed highly informative electronic signs all over: +--------------------------------+ |008TESTINGTESTINGTESTINGTESTINGT| |TESTING | | TESTING | | TESTING| +--------------------------------+ Very thorough -- they're not just testing whether the signs work. They're also testing whether they can be used for an impromptu game of "Hollywood Squares" to entertain the passengers whenever all flights are cancelled, if Whoopi Goldberg happens to be in the airport. (I think there's a separate alarm that goes off whenever Whoopi enters the building. And there's a really big warning siren in case Paul Lynde walks in. The Transportation Security Agency is prepared to gun down Zombie Paul Lynde before he can make snide comments about my fuzzy fleece pants.) Hey, the signs just changed. The "008" disappeared, so now they just say "TESTING" across and diagonally. Pretty sneaky, Air Canada! Of course, I'm already aware of Air Canada's sneakiness. Like trying to fool me into thinking that "Air Canada JAZZ" is a different airline from "Air Canada". It's not a different airline unless it has a greater-than sign used as a vowel! But "Canadi>n" is now part of Air Canada (along with Air BC, Air Nova, etc.) -- Canada sure has a lot of pretend airlines. Now I'm on the plane. When I booked the flight, the computer told me almost all the seats were full, but there are only five people (myself included) on this little CRJ (sorry, I don't know the model number, the flight safety pamphlet just says "CRJ", and we could have assumed that a Canadian flight with only six passengers would be a CRJ -- "Canadair Regional Jet", made by a division of Bombardier. My guess is this is a CRJ-50, as it only has about 50 seats.) Amazingly, this plane is so small that my carry-on soft-side suitcase (really just an overnight bag, I travel light) won't fit into the overhead bin. The safety card has all the usual happy cartoon graphics of people surviving the cartoon plane plowing into a cartoon mountain nose-first. I don't know if it was drawn by Air Safety Graphics or not (they most of these cards, maybe all of them) and I'd like to ask them if they drew those stupid pamphlets for the U.S. Department Of Homeland Security (you can find the PDFs at www.ready.gov) which use this same wacky-looking style showing people how they should hide under their desk if a nuclear explosion goes off one block away or if a giant aerosol can sprays their crotch. I was asked if I wanted a newspaper -- "Globe, Post, or Citizen?" (meaning Toronto Globe & Mail, not Boston Globe) and of course I took the Ottawa Citizen, because it would confuse me to read about Toronto or wherever the Post is from (New York? Toronto? Battle Creek?) And a very good omen was the giant headline -- [Here I was interrupted for a while, because we took off ten minutes early. That's just how empty this plane is.] Today's headline is: TWO MORE STANLEY CUPS FOR OTTAWA That's right! The Ottawa Senators just won the Stanley Cup twice! Today! Right now! What's happening is that although everyone knows they won in 1903, 1904, 1905, 1909, 1911, 1920, 1921, 1923, and 1927, the team had forgotten then also won in 1906 and 1910. (Back then the Cup could change hands two or three times a year.) The NHL isn't contesting Ottawa's claim to two extra victories, partly because the NHL wasn't even founded yet (1917, if I remember correctly) and partly because they don't like to admit that winning the Stanley Cup wasn't that big a deal back when there were so few teams and everyone could win the Cup the same year. The newspaper claims this means that now the Senators have the same number of Stanley Cup wins as the Toronto Maple Leafs, but they're counting Ottawa's earliest wins (when the team was "The Silver Seven" -- the seventh player position, the "rover", no longer exists) but they're not counting Toronto's wins as "The Toronto St. Pats", even though they became the Leafs. This is the same sort of fudging the NHL does -- they like to sell souvenirs advertising "The Original Six" (Boston, Detroit, Montreal, Toronto, I forget the other two) while leaving out Ottawa (the Ottawa Senators certainly existed when the NHL was formed -- it was just them, Toronto, and two Montreal teams) and yet they include the Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings (who didn't join the NHL until later) and the Maple Leafs (who weren't the Maple Leafs yet.) I think their logic is that the Ottawa Senators didn't play from the 1940s through the 1980s, but then how do they justify including all those other teams? Doesn't a team that was actually playing in the NHL when it was founded count just as much as the ones like the Bruins who weren't? (To say nothing of the Montreal Wanderers, who ceased to exist, and therefore are now considered to never have existed at all.) Basically, the NHL just likes to claim the Original Six includes the six best-known teams because that's what sells souvenirs (look in any catalog of sports stuff and you'll see lots of Red Wings and Bruins knick-knacks but almost no Ottawa stuff.) Anyway, I think it's great that today's newspaper just told me the team I like got not just one, but two, Stanley Cups today. But now this leads to confusion about what I'd like to happen next. The Senators game I most wanted to see this week (the one I bought tickets for) is against the Maple Leafs, and because it's Jersey Redemption Night, they'll give me two free tickets for cheap seats at one of the next two games (either against the Pittsburgh Penguins or the Boston Bruins. I don't know if they'll let me choose.) I have no opinion about the Penguins, but I am intimately familiar with -- and strongly dislike -- the Bruins, so all other things being equal, I'd prefer to see the Bruins game just so I could see my home team lose. But! Before the Penguins game, they're going to have a special ceremony to add the two newly-discovered Stanley Cup victories, and celebrate the 100th anniversary of the one in 1903. So that might be my only chance to see a team having a Stanley Cup victory party in person. If I had known there was going to be a 100th anniversary thingie, I would have worn a Freddy Krueger sweater. (That's what the Senators played in back then -- completely plain sweaters with red, white, and black horizontal stripes, no logo of any sort. The Canadiens are the only one of the original four NHL teams to still dress like they did in the olden days.) The paper has a nice photo of the team in 1905, posing with the Stanley Cup, which was tiny back then. The photo must have been taken moments before they got drunk and accepted someone's dare to kick it into the Rideau Canal (which was, fortunately, frozen solid, but they couldn't find the Cup again until the next morning, due to darkness and extreme drunkenness.) I suppose that head injuries due to playing without helmets may have also been a factor. (The NHL now requires helmets, but they still actively discourage face masks -- you're allowed to wear them, but they add extra penalties if you get into a fight while you're wearing the proper safety gear. Sports leagues are all run by nitwits.) So in any case, whether they give me free tickets to the Bruins game or the Penguins game, it'll be interesting. Page 2 of the Ottawa Citizen has a headline of somewhat lesser importance: "Citizen wins four awards for excellence in design," although those of us in the know realize that newspaper-industry awards are much easier to get than even a World War I-era Stanley Cup. They're like those awards you get at camp. "What can we say that's nice about this newspaper? I know! They laid it out so that none of the headlines touch! And we'll give it a separate design award for each section!" My in-flight snack includes a bag of "Yum Yum" brand potato chips ("Yum Yum Nature Regular Croustilles Chips" because they're Canadian) but the logo confuses me: ####### #### (R) #### ## Yum ###### ### ##### ###### #### ##### ##### ## #### #### #### #### #### ## #### #### #### #### #### ### ##### ##### ###### ###### ### ...I can't decide if that says "Yum Yum" or "Yum Yum", because I don't know if the one on top comes first, or the one on the left comes first. And the little circled (R) is no help because it's equidistant from the two. These potato chips are good, but confusing. I may buy "yum YUM" brand again, as long as I'm not careful to get "YUM yum" brand by mistake. These chips' evil twins are probably poutine-flavored. Or worse, poutine-avec-ketchup. I also got a Kellogg's NutriGrain bar which is either "Mixed Berry" or "Fruits des champs" flavor. I'm not sure which. It doesn't seem to contain any actual berries, so unless "Fruits des champs" means "a tiny smear of artificial purple goo" I don't think it was either. ("champs" probably doesn't mean anything, because they didn't have to capitalize it.) MY SNACKS ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY!!! Fortunately, I ate them, so now I just have to get rid of these disturbing wrappers and I'll be okay. Okay, we've landed a little ahead of time, so I was only about an hour late getting out of the airport. Because, as I said, there were only five people on the plane, and only two of us were suspicious, and I was in line behind the really suspicious one. I was interrogated at the customs booths, then I got interrogated at the customs/immigrations booth, then I had to talk to the customs/baggage claim officer, then I was interrogated (and my stuff searched) by the customs/search officer. Etienne, I should warn you, the government now has your phone number in at least four different files. And in one of them, they think you're a girl. (The most suspicious guy wanted to know your phone number, so I had to open up the E-mail you sent, and he read the whole thing, including every one of the headers, and because my mail program adds "X-SpamAssassin:" headers all over the place, I had to explain the concept of spam to him so that I could then explain the concept of spam filtering and why your mail said "Assassin" at the top.) Also, because I was wearing my Senators jersey, which I had done because I thought that would be the least suspicious thing I could possibly wear in Ottawa, it turns out that that was the most suspicious thing I could do, and every one of the customs people observed that tonight's game had already started (between 30 minutes and 90 minutes ago, depending on the stage of customs) and I had to explain that I was going to a game later in the week, and then they'd start fishing (Who's playing? Can I see your tickets? Did you buy these yourself? Where did you buy these?) I always resent the idiotic questions they ask just to ensure that no complete morons are wandering into the country ("How long was your flight?" was one. "Just UNDER an hour," I said, after an hour of these interrogations.) I think the biggest problem is that there were all these customs people and I was one of the only two people who needed to be "interviewed", so they could focus plenty of energy on me until the next plane was due to arrive. This was much more annoying than the time I went through customs in Toronto (where they did threaten me with jail time for no reason, but the whole interrogation was only about 15 minutes, making it four times better than in Ottawa.) The guy selling tickets for the city bus couldn't change a $20 (the only Canadian money I had was some $20 bills left over from my Toronto trip in 2002) so I had to buy some Tim Bits (those are just like Dunkin' Munchkins, only bilingual) to get change. Not being able to make change for a Canadian twenty-dollar bill is like not having change for an American twelve-dollar bill. Buses in Ottawa are long and bendy. Ones that have security cameras installed have a logo showing a giant scary owl shoving people into the bus with his enormous wing. I won't even mention OC Transpo's new "Bait Car" (a clandestine security sting which they describe in their brochures.) The Quebecois side of the river has a different transport system (STO) but I don't know if they have an equivalent of a "Bait Car" called "Escargot". Day 2 (Sunday): All over the TV this morning: Men's curling. Women's curling. Men's hockey. College hockey. High school hockey. Ringette. Lacrosse. And more curling. I can't figure out what the deal is with curling. It seems like one of the least exciting sports that could be on television -- worse than even candlepin bowling. (Maybe not as dull as golf.) At one point one of the channels split the screen to show two different curling matches so I could see nothing happening in two different places at the same time. Most curling telecasts consist of a few minutes of a still picture of a bullseye (the "house") while the commentators talk about where the stones are sitting, then occasionally one of the players (the "skip") will slide a stone, and as it slowly moves towards the house the guy who threw it will bellow like an insane person for the thirty seconds it takes the other two guys to sweep the ice in front of it. (They don't even use real brooms any more, they use Swiffers.) I don't understand the bellowing. Either the guy is assuming his teammates are too dumb to remember to keep sweeping, or else he's trying to propel the stone with the power of his voice. Ringette is a sport which is like hockey but for girls. It's just as dangerous to play as hockey (I only watched for thirty seconds and got to see someone get hurt) but it involves poking a stick through a bagel. Instead of a puck, there's a ring, and instead of hockey sticks, they use pool cues. Except for the goalie, who gets a hockey stick instead of a ringette stick, but it's not a hockey goalie's stick, it's a non-goalie hockey stick. My head hurts. DEAR CANADA, STOP MAKING UP GOOFY SPORTS! The local cable access channel (Shaw Cable) is showing some sort of telethon (OttawaHeart.ca, whatever that is) and there's a big picture of Gossamer dancing with a top hat and cane at bottom left. Gossamer, for those of you who have not memorized every antique cartoon, is the big furry orange monster that chased Bugs Bunny around in two old Warner Brothers cartoons. My best guess it that the local Warner Brothers subsidiary thought the dancing frog would offend Francophones, so they had to substitute an even more minor Warner Brothers character. Except Gossamer shouldn't sing and dance. He's a wad of fur with eyes. HE'S JUST A WAD! Addendum: Shortly after I wrote that, I mentioned the incident to Dan, who immediately remarked that it was incredibly obvious that the thing is supposed to be a happy heart, even if my TV is making him orange. I still don't know why the organ has a top hat and cane in a Michigan J. Frog pose, and prefer to believe that he's just a badly-drawn Gossamer, because Gossamer is much less scary than a tap-dancing heart (who presumably has another one of him inside himself.) Actual quote from a Canadian TV weatherperson: "Why the blowing snow? That's because of the winds!" The Diefenbunker was all booked up, mandating a substitute visit to the Canadian Museum Of Science & Technology, which had not just one but two displays bragging that Canada invented Pablum brand pablum. Also the canoe and the snowshoe and some sort of screwdriver I've never used. The museum also had a highly expensive Francophone Aibo who did not respond to commands in any language, as well as the original Apollo 7 command module and, for no apparent reason, in the middle of the exhibit on conserving energy there was a sort-of-virtual-reality hockey goalie simulator, which I sucked at, although in all fairness it was probably harder than real hockey, where the opposing players don't always have perfect aim and the puck can't teleport from place to place and the puck can cast a shadow. Today's most disturbing TV commercial: Apparently you can cook Kraft Dinner by dumping it into the washing machine at the laundromat. I wonder if that would also work with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. [continued in part 2] ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Kibo goes to Ottawa (part 2 of 3) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:04:56 +0000 [continued from part 1] Day 3 (Monday): I ventured outside again, but it was so cold and windy that I couldn't go any further than the bus stop. I took the bus over to the Rideau Centre thinking it would be a good place to buy a better winter hat, like a tuque with ear flaps or something, because isn't everyone in Canada required by law to have a tuque, ear flaps, or both? But I couldn't find any ski hats at the sporting-goods stores there (there were socks with blocky Senators logos, lots of baseball caps, no good winter hats that would fit me) so I wound up in the Hudson Bay Company store (est. 1690) and they had one hat with ear flaps, lined with what used to be a bunny rabbit, for CDN$55, and I bought it. It came to about US$24, because it was on sale for half price, but then there was the usual 15% sales tax (GST plus PST) but US$24 isn't too bad for a hat made from a dead pet. I don't like the idea of killing a bunny, but in this weather, it was either him or me. So now I have a the most Canadian hat possible -- I skipped getting a tuque and went directly to full-blown dorque. While walking around Byward Market, I found a good used book store (bought some wacky French children's sci-fi novels) and a store that had cutesy names for each of several hundred kinds of beads. Also the local offices of Chum Television. Chum made "Lexx", and owns the Space channel, and is named after fish guts. The stores here have equal quantities of Senators and Canadiens souvenirs, and even some Leafs stuff. Apparently the Senators aren't all that popular, even here. Since I'm within walking distance of Quebec, it's understandable that the Canadiens are popular, but other teams have some support too. I've actually seen just as many people wearing Bruins gear (one) as wearing Senators gear (one, not counting me.) On the other hand, clearly people here do like hockey, because all snack foods have ads for hockey on them. Coke cans have pictures of hockey jerseys (the ones on sale in the hotel lobby all advertise the Canadiens), Cheerios boxes include DVDs of Team Canada winning the Olympics, Oreos have team logos stamped into them, and McDonalds is advertising a sandwich with the word "hockey" in its name. (I don't know if they refer to the printed-on "grill marks" as "board burns".) With the fur-lined hat, going outside is tolerable for fifteen to twenty minutes instead of zero. I walked to a supermarket and marvelled at the vast selection of meat pies. Fun fact: "shepherd's pie" (meat stew pie with mashed potatoes on top) is translated into French as "Chinese pie". My dinner was a frozen cassoulet (mmm, canardy) and some sugar pie (mmm, sugary) and some American-shaped bacon advertised as "GENUINE CANADIAN BACON" (mmm, multinational bacon.) Now that I've been to the supermarket I'm no longer limited to what's available in the hotel convenience store when I need to eat at 3am (they serve a fancy French dinner called "Bifteck Salisbury avec sauce aux champignons, pommes de terre, ma”s et dessert aux pommes", or on the other side of the box, "Swanson's Vulcanized Meat Puck -- Not Approved For Hockey".) Dumbest souvenir I've found so far: Keychains with one tiny boxing glove attached to each. They gloves are red and white and say "CANADA", because everyone associates Canada with midget boxing. Or maybe they're supposed to be hockey gloves, but if so, they really suck. I'll have to think about whether I should go back and look at them again and again until I figure them out. Today's third most disturbing TV commercial: An ad for TSN (The Sports Network -- one of the eight or nine hockey-oriented channels) where the camera just showed a men's room where a hockey player was shaving with one of his skates, and Carlton the bear (the Leafs' mascot) was taking a whiz. Apparently we're supposed to trust and respect TSN because they show us what bears do in the men's room. I think. (Fun fact: TSN puts up a disclaimer saying "The following program may contain material that may offend some viewers" before every one of their shows, such as "The Hockey News". I'm not sure how many fans say, "AUGH MY TEAM LOST!!! no wait I'm not upset about that because they warned me the show might offend me. Let's have some lemonade!") Today's second most disturbing TV commercial: The one where the guy thaws out a caveman, feeds him Campbell's Chunky Chili, and sets up a blind double date -- the women refuse to spend time with the guy and the "chili-filled Neanderthal" and walk out, so the guy asks the caveman what they should do now, and he grunts "WATCH HOCKEY!" Today's most disturbing TV commercial: "...lacy fabric should never touch a man's privates... Frank's Hot Sauce can excite you in a way silk panties never could." Seriously, if the best thing they can say about their own product is that it's useful in S&M sessions, the flavor probably isn't the best. (By the way, one of the channels here -- "Life" -- has a program that shows actual S&M sessions. And I don't mean the mild spankings you can see on HBO's "Real Sex". I mean they show red bodily fluid. Canadian TV tends to leave the violence out of movies but sex is okay, and apparently sex involving bleeding counts as sex, not violence. It was difficult to sit through the entire show.) Day 4 (Tuesday, March 4): WOO! SENS WIN! Got to see the Ottawa Senators clobber the Toronto Maple Leafs in a real hockey game. The Leafs played Boston-style -- they scored first, and then lost by a large margin, after coming unglued and starting lots of fights and forgetting to even try to get the puck into the net. (The Sens had 42 shots on goal, the Leafs only 17, so it's not surprising the final score was 4 to 1.) The low point of the night, for the Leafs, was when one of their players started a fight by diving into the Senators' bench, a definite violation (not to mention one of the stupidest things he could do unless he really wanted to be pummeled by a dozen guys at one.) I was sitting just behind the Leafs' end of the bench, 'cause that way I would have a good view of the Leafs' goal for 2/3 of the game, but the big fight happened where I couldn't really see it. I did get to watch the game over the back of Tie Domi's head a lot before they threw him out of the game for another fight. The Leafs (like the Bruins) are one of those aggressive but mediocre teams who are driven absolutely insane by teams that do better than them while playing nice. (The Sens do fight back, but when they lose, it doesn't cause them to go postal and start picking fights with players who are sitting on the bench. They're one of the least-penalized teams in the league.) There were a lot of Leafs fans at the game, and Spartacat (the Sens' mascot) enjoyed taking their flags away and wiping his butt with them. If the Leafs fans were clever, they'd bring flags covered in Krazy Glue. Spartacat openly taunted the Leafs fans (while wearing a "LEAFS SUCK" t-shirt) and the Sens fans were rude to them, even yelling insults in the parking lot after the Leafs lost. In other words, it's possible for Canadians to act like Americans! If America ever needs to invade Canada, the President should blow up the NHL, causing Canadians to lose the will to resist. Hockey is the only thing that can turn Canadians from Vulcans to Klingons. (If the "Battlestar Galactica" Cylons hadn't worn hockey gloves, Lorne Greene would have surrendered.) One of the various prize drawings that night involved them taking someone out to center ice, putting a black bag over her head and then spinning her around to disorient her while 18,500 people yelled at her. Does Amnesty International know about this? It was difficult, but eventually I found out where to redeem my icky used Leafs jersey for a discount on a studly new Sens jersey. (At the Senators' store -- "Sensations" -- they told me to go upstairs. Upstairs, they told me to go to a nonexistent table downstairs. After the game I went back to the store and they admitted that, yes, I was supposed to take it there all along.) Similar confusion on the part of the staff accompanied my requests as to where to pick up my Senators "Swipe & Score / Gagner en Glissant" card (attending one game earned me the reward of a medium Coke and a video greeting from Patrick Lalime, in French.) Redeeming the Leafs jersey gave me a voucher for two free tickets for Tuesday's Bruins game, except that they had to be redeemed at the box office, which was closed, so now I have to go back to the Corel Centre (which is not close to the city) to get tickets before they sell out so that I can go to the Corel Centre a third time. This will not be easy. Fun fact: The Senators charge an extra 20% for tickets whenever they play the Leafs. Went to the local snowboard store and bought long underwear. Now my top, middle, and bottom layers of clothes are all the same shape. I have to be careful not to put the thermal underwear on inside out, because the magical wicking action would force moisture from the air into my skin. Day 5 (Wednesday, March 5): Walked up Parliament Hill and wandered into the Canadian government and before I knew it I was signed up for the Centre Block Tour. The weather is getting better -- it's now only a little below freezing, but it's snowing hard, there are snowdrifts and puddles of slush everywhere, so I'm happy to spend some time inside. After this I'm going to try to go up the Peace Tower. It's snowing too hard to get any good photos from the top of it, but I'll attempt it anyway, and I can always come back in a few days if it suddenly becomes sunny. All the Canadian federal government buildings are these ultra-ornate rococco things covered with spires which are covered with spikes which are covered with spires which are covered with more spikes. This sort of French gingerbready architecture is quite different from the American government's neoclassical style. The U.S. Capitol has one pointy bit, Canada's Parliament has several million. [at this point there is a break in the narrative, because there was a break in my computer, when the screen went black and made bacon-frying noises after it got snowed on while I was walking to Parliament, so I wrote the rest of this entry two days later] Parliament was quite interesting to see, although I wouldn't want to be governed by it. I hereby declare that Kibonia will secede from Canada if it ever becomes part of Canada. (After all, everyone else wants to secede, so in the name of Canadian togetherness I'd have to secede like all the other provinces. Currently Quebec and Alberta want to secede, and I bet Nunavut only got their first traffic light by threatening to secede.) From the top of the Peace Tower, I could see all the way to Quebec, but I can do that from the ground too. Ontario and Quebec are only separated by a river topped with a language barrier. The TV and newspaper tell me that two of the Leafs have been suspended (by the NHL) for their 'roid rage yesterday. Today's most disturbing TV commercial: For Lipton Sidekicks (i.e. a packet of dehydrated noodles in artificial chicken broth), the time-saving nature of the product was demonstrated by having a woman doing her ironing while a giant packet of noodles played with her baby. Apparently ironing is more important than either children or cooking. I've got news for you, Lipton: Even if I were a woman and I loved ironing, I still wouldn't buy your noodles just to be able to do more ironing. The noodles should be doing the ironing. Day 6 (Thursday, March 6): Walked to a computer store and bought an emergency backup computer. Spent much of the day getting everything transferred to the new computer and secure-erasing it from the old computer (which required a little ingenuity to do without any tools; can you say 'cat /dev/random >deadbeef' for a few hours?) Walked around Confederation Square a little, did some grocery shopping, but on the whole was too exhausted/nervous from the computer problems to do anything ambitious. Went to the Museum of Nature, which is immediately behind the hotel. They're a pretty good natural history museum. Sat through a really lame animatronic presentation where several talking rocks and a videotape of a wacky robot showed how rocks are dated using a time machine powered by "Blake's 7" quality special effects. This museum's building also was Parliament for one year, when the real Parliament burned down in 1919. It used to be filled with senators, and now it's filled with dinosaurs. At the end of the day, while packing up the computer to take it to the shop, I dropped it, and that made the screen start working again. Apparently I should have waited more than 36 hours for the moisture to evaporate. But I'd rather keep the new computer (lighter, faster, less battered) even though it did cost a bunch (CDN$1800 including GST and PST, I could have gotten it in Boston for US$1000.) Day 7 (Friday, March 7): Took the old computer to the computer store (they'll try to recondition it over the next few days and figure out how much trade-in allowance to give me.) Walked from the Rideau Centre along the Pont Alexandra bridge (see? I'm bilingual!) into Quebec, to the Museum Of Civilization. They had a big exhibit on things (and people) found in ancient bogs of Europe, and this was great for me because I had just been reading histories of northern Europe during that time. (I've gotten as far as Julius Caesar's description of how to trap an elk.) I took a lot of reference photos of ancient bronze and gold stuff as research for projects I'm working on. (Now I know how to fasten a torc, and precisely what shape war axe to use while rounding up people for human sacrifices.) The front of the Museum Of Civilization is a giant "Star Wars" stormtrooper helmet. The back is something almost as horrifying as a giant Jar Jar butt: Canada's Postal Museum. With a special exhibit on the history of mail-order catalogs in Canada. That's right, it's a museum about the wonders of things like junk mail. And not even real American junk mail! My favorite exhibit was an interactive quiz (touchscreen) where I had to learn about the heroic efforts Canada Post goes to to deliver mail when avalanches blocks roads, and the reward for sitting through all the propaganda was a postal-themed Tetris game where the object was to sort mail into groups of three matching packages to make them disappear forever. (The bricks were packages of two sizes, and the large size was 1.5 times the size of the small one, so you could never win because the packages wouldn't stack neatly.) I still need to find a video store in Quebec so I can see what weird DVDs are available with English subtitles. They're probably even weirder than the DVDs available in Anglophone Canada (which have packages that say things like "Mike Myers in his first serious dramatic role!") I walked back from Quebec to Ontario along a different bridge (Pont du Portage, which crosses Victoria Island) and when I crossed into Ottawa I found a big building that said "Ticketmaster". So I tried to redeem my voucher for the free tickets to the Bruins game. They wouldn't take the voucher, but I hatched an evil scheme to buy tickets to the Penguins game for Etienne so that when he drives us to the Penguins game (Sunday) I could redeem my voucher for free tickets to the Bruins game (Tuesday) before they're sold out, and then I should have my fill of NHL games for the next year or so. Went to an Ottawa 67s (minor league hockey) game. The deal with non-NHL hockey is that you get a game of 95% NHL intensity, but the tickets cost about 6% what good NHL tickets do. The 67s beat the Oshawa Generals 6 to 1. Also I "won" a free hat that says "Porter Cable" (they sponsored the game and threw about 9,000 free hats into the crowd of 10,004 people) and everyone got a bag of honey/nut flavor Cheerios snack mix. The 67s have not just one but three costumed mascots (a raccoon in a white jersey, a raccoon in a black jersey, and a really terrifying walking, smiling hockey puck with giant fangs) as well as cheerleaders, a mini-blimp, and a strange inflatable red stick figure twenty feet tall that dances whenever the 67s score. It's a lot of bozosity for just CDN$12. Oh, also, it was the coach's 999th OHL victory (all with the 67s) so if my ticket had been for the next game, it would have been a big deal of some sort. I suppose they'd bring out a third identical raccoon who could crash the blimp into the Zamboni which would knock the giant scary puck man into the net, showering everyone with millions of "Porter Cable" hats. The walking 67s puck is absolutely the scariest mascot costume I have ever seen, including the guy dressed as a nine-pin connector at a computer parts show. The version of the evil fanged puck guy the 67s use as their logo is scary enough (it's a puck snarling and punching you) but the walk-around suit is even scarier because (a) it's a giant foam-rubber walk-around suit and (b) they tried to change its facial expression so that instead of snarling, it's smiling, but still with the same foot-long teeth. It's like if Pac-Man was vulcanized and a vampire and chased you around in real life. (I don't know what the Generals' mascot is, but since they don't even have a real logo, maybe he's just a guy with a wallet card that says "OFFICIAL MASCOT".) There was not one person wearing a Generals shirt in the audience for the 67s game. Apparently Leafs fans are willing to drive from Toronto (or even live in Ottawa) but the minor-league fans stay where they're supposed to. The 67s have the wackiest-looking arena ever. It's like a pineapple upside down cake that got dropped on the floor so that the parking, hockey, and football got all mixed together, along with lots of crazy ramps and a giant inflatable bubble. It's hard to describe, but the seats for the outdoor football stadium are also the roof over the hockey arena, except if you sit in those seats you're facing a big opaque blister. I confused the woman at the 67s' concession stand because I asked for "green Gatorade" and in Canada, green Gatorade is yellow. I have no idea why, or what this means for the color of what would normally be yellow Gatorade (brown? puce?) Because I was sitting behind the net, I couldn't just wait for one of the mascots to shoot a submarine sandwich at me with his mascot food gun. Hockey fans actually seem to enjoy eating food that's been pooted out of a bazooka -- there should be a restaurant for them, where all food would come out of a cannon. Especially the Sloppy Joes, creamed corn, and poutine. The restaurant's mascot could be a guy wearing a big foam rubber puck costume filled with chili he could spit up on the luckiest customers. Etienne took me to a St. Hubert restaurant for an authentic Quebecois dessert (something called "Pudding Ch™mer", involving bread pudding covered in maple/caramel syrup, and it disturbed me because it smelled exactly the same as the hotel's pink soap) and then we went to the Casino du Lac-Leamy, which was a casino like every other casino in the world that doesn't have a theme other than "gamble here". I prefer the "Battlestar Galactica" casino and the other wacky-themed ones in Las Vegas just because, hey, "Battlestar Galactica". Also, they have signs in eight languages instead of just two. Incidentally, that hotel soap has about five poppy seeds embedded in every bar. At least, the label says they're poppy seeds. I worry that it might be Pink Pudding-Scented Soap With Live Sea-Monkey Eggs. Hey, the 67s game is being repeated on TV now. I'll try to snap a photo of the TV screen showing a picture of me taking photos at the game. (It's not being filmed very well -- people keep walking in front of the TV camera. During slow-motion replays, the announcer's voice is also replayed at half speed. And they're even showing what happened between periods, involving Stupid Pet Tricks. Yes, it was "Pet Tricks Night".) Fun fact: The 67s are nicknamed "The Barber Poles" because they used to play in the same striped jerseys that the Ottawa Senators wore eighty years ago. (Now the 67s have jerseys with an actual logo and stuff.) Today's most disturbing TV commercial: Wing magazine, which publishes specialized recipes, because their target demographic is -- I am not making this up -- "The Ontario Chicken Lover". Now I know why the character of "Chicken Lover" on "South Park" looked like Doug Henning. [to be concluded in part 3] ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Kibo goes to Ottawa (part 3 of 3) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:05:28 +0000 Day 8 (Saturday, May 8): First off I wanted to go to the Rideau Centre because I was running low on bus tickets (bus fare is $2.50 cash or two 85c tickets) so I took the bus towards that end of town, so that I could buy tickets and then walk past Parliament to the Currency Museum, but as the bus went past Confederation Square I noticed there was a crowd of protesters in front of Parliament, and another smaller group at the Rideau Centre (the American embassy is behind it) so I ducked into the mall for a while until the crowd dispersed. It was some sort of anti-war protest, but it probably won't work because Canadians are too polite to make good protesters. (They were probably quietly saying slogans such as "Settle international disputes through curling, please.") (Later, according to the TV news, I found out it was a combination peace protest and International Woman's Day rally, so change "curling" to "ringette". And why didn't the U.S. State Department warn me that I was going to a country with civil unrest?) Also, the ticket office was closed for the weekend. I went back to that same bad souvenir store just to see if the keychains with the little boxing gloves had turned into hockey gloves, but they were indeed boxing gloves and not hockey gloves. So those souvenirs shall remain a puzzlement forever unexplained by science, just like how nobody knows why Campbell's Chunky Soup always makes you feel sick. The Currency Museum was great. There's no admission charge (I guess they already have all the money they need) and they have an amazing collection of coins and bank notes, some of which are really bizarre. They only had two major omissions: They didn't have the current American dollar coin, and they didn't have a single coin with my picture on it. I took photos of many weird things. The boutique was selling the nerdiest book ever, "The Charlton Standard Catalogue of Canadian Tire Cash Bonus Coupons". (Why is one of Canadian Tire's logos a Scotsman named "Sandy McTire"? Does this mean that Scotch Tape will start using a Mountie named "Gordie McSticky"?) Visited the Capital Infocentre just long enough to admire the big tabletop model of Ottawa, suitable for a very low-key "Godzilla" movie. ("Godzilla's crushing the Glebe, eh? Hey, Godzilla, take off, you hoser!") Walked around downtown a little, then took a bus south and walked around the Glebe area, bought the cheapest T-shirt at the tiny 67s store (in front of that weird-looking arena where I saw them play last night), walked north to the hotel, dropped off stuff I'd accumulated, took a bus west, walked north to Chinatown, walked around, bought some groceries at a local supermarket, and took a bus back to the hotel. Stuff in Ottawa closes early, especially on weekends. On weekdays at least there's lots of TV to watch (even if it consists mostly of weird sports and endless reruns of "The Simpsons" -- "The Simpsons" airs on at least five channels here) but on Saturday there's nothing on TV except for hockey games and lots of really boring bad TV. (Even the hockey is usually bad, because hockey on TV is not exciting, and this stuff is contaminated with icky Don Cherry, who has the annoyingness of Howard Cosell without the erudition. And none of the games on TV here is the one the home team is playing in!) Local talk shows abound. Canadian cable TV systems usually carry a bunch of American channels in addition to the native ones, just so people who don't like sports or talk shows about municipal government will have something to watch on weekends. Oh, and "Puppets Who Kill" may be the funniest thing ever to air only on Canadian TV. Of course, all other comedy that airs only in Canada is lame (such as "Open Mike With Mike Bullard" and "Royal Canadian Air Farce") so "Puppets Who Kill" wouldn't have to be very good to seem great in comparison, but I think it is actually a great show. It's the same show as "TV Funhouse" except with much more complexity and a darker tone, sort of like if "Seinfeld" were done with puppets... who kill. It was about the only good thing I could find on TV tonight. Today's second most disturbing TV commercial: Mike Fisher robotically saying, "Hi, I'm Mike Fisher, one of the Ottawa Senators..." and entreating us to watch hockey on TV because "it's better than Oprah." Or maybe he said "okra". I'm not sure which, but I like okra, so I need to find out what he said. Today's most disturbing TV commercial: At a hockey game, all the spectators love one of the players, so they all throw their hats onto the ice, but the guy gets beaned by a bronze helmet thrown by one of the three Vikings in the second row, and a hockey fan in the first row starts jumping up and down and yelling "I WON!!!" because in some sort of hockey-related sweepstakes "anything can happen". I have no clue what the point was. I think I'll have to see this commercial six or seven more times before I figure out what the deal is, and why it takes place in a universe where people throw their hats away at hockey games. Maybe it's a 67s game in reverse and thousands of people are giving back their "Porter Cable" hats. GO BIZARRO 67S GO! No, wait, I mean, STOP BIZARRO 67S STOP! ME WANT YOU TO SCORE SHOE TRICK BY SHOOTING OWN GOAL THREE TIMES AFTER GAME ENDS! KISS INSTEAD OF FIGHT! FANS ALL DRESS AS GIANT SCARY PUCK CREATURES AND ARE ENTERTAINED BY MAN IN UNDERPANTS! WORSE THAN OPRAH! Here's an idea: We could get those Vikings, Sandy McTire, Gordie McSticky, and Porter McCable together and they could fight to the death by throwing hats like Oddjob. Mary Tyler Moore could be the commentator. Also, Don Cherry could be a Mafioso made out of red Twizzlers, and would inflate after every goal, then he'd be shot out of a bazooka. Note: Neither of those hockey-themed commercials aired during a hockey game. If you think commercials during the other shows have too much hockey, you should see the commercials during the hockey. (One of the things that's wrong with hockey on TV is that the commercials contain more hockey than the show.) There are no commercials where people are curling, which is odd, because people who enjoy curling would buy anything. Suddenly it smells like algae in here. Day 9 (Sunday, May 9): It came to me in a dream -- this morning between the time Housekeeping woke me up and the time my alarm clock woke me up, I realized that the reason there's no 3-D television is that there are probably a lot more people who are partly vampirous than full vampires, and thus these people would only show up in one of the two images. Their only power would be to give people headaches, but only if they own a $3,000 TV. I suspect this is the only reason Canada isn't broadcasting curling games in 3-D, because we all know that curlers are undead of some sort. I had thought zombies, but apparently they're vampires. Was escorted through the "Diefenbunker", Canada's nuclear-blast-proof shelter to ensure "continuity of government" in a nuclear war. Prime Minister Diefenbaker had it built, but he never told anyone else, so it was forgotten until the Trudeau administration discovered it while auditing financial records. It's 600 feet underground and filled with fun history. For instance, rifles used to be stored in a rack outside the mess hall, but then a soldier stationed at the Diefenbunker went postal and took a rifle to Ottawa to try to kill the Prime Minister, so they decided to keep the weapons locked up from then on. They wouldn't let me take pictures in the Diefenbunker (probably because they knew I was an American -- I had to write my name and postal code on the admission ticket) so I only snapped one. My favorite item was a photo of the facility under construction, where in one corner of the photo there was a little sign attached to the building's skeleton, "DO NOT URINATE INSIDE STRUCTURE -- PENALTY DISMISSAL". I even got to hear to one of the tapes that would have been played over your local Conelrad radio station (later known as the Emergency Broadcast System) to inform you that you were being vaporized. I kept expecting to turn a corner and catch Dick Cheney moving all his stuff into the Diefenbunker. I highly recommend the tour to anyone who isn't claustrophobic or afraid of mannequins in gas masks. The Diefenbunker museum is also currently hosting an exhibit on the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but all the maps about the dangers of nuclear proliferation had Nova Scotia colored in as part of the United States, so what do they know? Guess what was painted on one of the walls inside the bunker. Hint: It rhymes with "scurling". There were stick figures playing other sports too, but I figure Canada was the only government to have a secret plan to guarantee that, if the world blew up, there would be continuity of curling. Saw my second Senators game, which began with the ceremony honoring the 100th anniversary of their first Cup. They played the Pittsburgh Penguins (the two teams had also played the night before, in Pittsburgh.) The Pens' one big star, Mario Lemieux, didn't play because he's enough of a big shot that he doesn't have to play two games back-to-back right before he retires at the end of this season. Therefore, the Senators didn't have much of a problem winning 4 to 2. (Today's National Post claims Mario Lemieux looks like k.d. lang.) Picked up my free tickets to Tuesday's the Sens/Bruins game, and bought some souvenir pucks because I didn't catch any. Pucks are Cdn$4.25 and are available with many logos, including one showing Spartacat. They are "MADE IN CANADA OR CHINA OR TAIWAN OR SLOVAKIA", meaning they're all made in Slovakia. They make great paperweights if you don't mind the odor. When I ran my "Swipe & Score / Gagner en Glissant" frequent-visitor rewards (ha ha) card through the machine for the second time, I "won" an entry in a sweepstakes to win free tickets to the other game I saw last week. Now all I have to do is invent a time machine and prevent myself from seeing last week's game and then maybe I can win tickets to it, but then I won't be eligible to win because I won't have been to two games yet. GEE, SLICK PROMOTION, TICKETMASTER. This second game also earned me another "prize" of a coupon good for a free slice of Pizza Pizza brand pizza, redeemable at any Pizza Pizza location EXCEPT the one at the arena. The Senators played in their alternate jerseys (the black ones) for this game, but this season they've reduced costs by eliminating two of the colors from the logo, so all the subtle shading is now black, and the players look like they're wearing Xeroxes of jerseys. Between periods they had two teams of children (winners of some Canadian Tire contest) playing a round of hockey, but I wasn't sure which team I was supposed to be cheering for because both were wearing Senators jerseys (the team with the red ones beat the team with the white ones.) Today's most disturbing TV commercial: A guy with nipple rings, and Frank's Hot Sauce "...will excite you in a way nipple modification never can." What's the deal with Frank's pervy hot sauce? Did these people pick their ad agency out of the wrong column of the newspaper's personals? Day 10 (Monday, May 10): The weather is clear and sunny today, but it's still insanely cold (-11C right now, wind chill -27C.) Went back to the computer shop to get the credit for the old computer I was trading in (the semi-sort-of-broken one.) Got about half the price of the new one back. I went to the Rideau Centre to buy more bus tickets, and also picked up one of the older, not-Xerox-style Senators jerseys. The nice-looking young woman behind the counter had also noticed the logo on the new jerseys was missing the highly important yet subtle shading. I think I'm in love. Walked across the street to the National Defence building so I could ride the bus along the Transitway to a shopping center at Greenboro to look around. Then I took the O-Train back to downtown. The O-Train only has five stations, and it runs back and forth along a single track, which, oddly, is also shared with real trains, meaning that someday someone will screw up and there will be a colossal accident. The O-Train is a light rail vehicle consisting of one long streamlined car with two articulated joints, and the seats at the two ends are eighteen inches higher than the others, for a great view of the not-much-to-see that is semi-rural Ontario in winter. There is a constant, rhythmic side-to-side rocking as the train moves, causing all the passengers to do Stevie Wonder impressions. At the O-Train station, I found a real swanky-looking watch on the ground. The glass has a little chip at 10 o'clock but the watch runs fine. No name was engraved or anything, and there was nobody else around, so I kept it. It's a "Monaco Polo Season" brand watch with lots of little dials I don't understand. It's on a cheap watchband with alternating silver-colored plastic and gold-colored plastic links. Correction: I've examined a highly magnified photo of the watch and the tiny lettering actually says "MONACO POIO SEASON". Took the bus to Hull, strolled around a fairly seedy area (Rue Eddy), got cold, took the bus back before any Quebecois biker gangs murdered me. Bought a frozen tortiere for dinner (the ingredients for the filling began with "pork, water, veal, lard" -- yes, real men CAN eat French food!) Unfortunately, none of the markets near the hotel has spruce beer, because apparently its delicate flavor can't survive the voyage across the dashed line that separates Quebec from Ontario. Bought boxes to mail souvenirs back to myself. Too cold to do much else today, so I went back to the hotel and started boxing up the stuff I'm sending home. (I want to get this done while I'll still have a chance to go to the postal store while it's still open, before the game tomorrow.) Tonight I am drinking "SODA PETILLANT AUX BLEUETS", which is a fancy way of saying "purple soda". I am not sure if it will kill me, because Canadian food usually doesn't have nutrition information printed on it (except for food which uses the Canadian Diabetes Association's symbology -- for example, a spaghetti entree contains two and a half squares, half a squished hexagon, half a "DO NOT ENTER", and half a triangle.) Today's most disturbing TV commercial: Some sort of refrigerated tortellini. I think this is supposed to show us how fresh they are: When the package is opened, all the noodles make gasping noises and throb like the cassette in "Videodrome". Wuh? Day 11 (Tuesday, May 11): Still haven't found any hidden cameras in the hotel room. However, the bathroom does have that disturbing drawing of the happy towel and the sad towel imploring me to save the environment by not throwing towels on the floor (because then they'd have to be washed, in detergent, and that's far worse for the environment than getting B.O. from a moldy towel.) I can tell this isn't an American hotel because it doesn't have the sticker on the back of the door saying "DUE TO STATE LAW WE HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO CHARGE $1,000.00 PER NIGHT IF WE EVER WANT TO." I also have not bumped into Cirque du Soleil performing on any streetcorners. Mailed my souvenirs home, which entailed filling out some insane customs forms, such as the one that wanted to know every detail of my hockey jerseys ("material composition", "neck style", "thread count", etc.) TV today is all about hockey players being traded. Live coverage of coaches talking about what players they've purchased. Phone interviews with players trying to be diplomatic when they say that they like the new city slightly better but they don't dislike the old city. "We have an hour and fifteen minutes left here on 'TradeCenter'... All evening we'll be bringing you what's been happening all day." In other words, hockey news is a five-hour show on TSN today. At least the curling finals are finally over. My free Senators/Bruins tickets are on the third level (about the thirty- somethingth row), behind the home goal. This is a far cry from sitting in the fourth row night before last, but hey, free. About the only advantage to sitting that high up is that when Spartacat shoots t-shirts out of his bazooka, or when hot dogs fall from the ceiling on little parachutes, that stuff all tends to go to the upper levels. My prediction: This game will have a LOT of fights. [...pause for a hockey game...] The results: The game didn't have a lot of fights, because it was tied for most of the game -- the Senators played unusually sloppily (they kept missing the puck) and the Bruins were actually concentrating on trying to score, because of the tie. The Senators eventually won, of course. It was a 4 to 3 overtime victory. Also, this time I was too high to catch anything, instead of too low. I think that if you want Spartacat to shoot at you, you need to be in the upper rows of the second level or the very front edge of the third level. (One cross fellow behind me kept complaining that they were only showing the "rich people" in the first level on TV -- well, DUH, the lights are all pointed at the RINK, not at the third level.) The Senators were wearing their black jerseys again. I'm told that next season these will be their official home jersey, so maybe they've already made the switch. Apparently they noticed I said the black ones are cooler than the white ones or the silly "Star Trek"-style red ones. Hmm. I should test whether I actually have this power: Dear Nashville Predators, your ugly booger-colored jerseys would look better if they were covered up with a big photo of me being given all the candy in the world by you. I will be available to pose tomorrow between 3:42 and 3:47 p.m. No licorice. The fans way up in the nosebleed seats are much rowdier than the ones down by the ice. Also, they get up to climb go to the bathroom (necessitating climbing over you) about fifty times as often, and their conversations do not have the sparkling wit of those conducted by the people who can afford good seats. The game was still fun, but the experience is definitely better down in the Air Canada Club Seats. Remember: "Air Canada Club" refers to hockey, while "Aeroplan" refers to Air Canada's discount program. When I get to the airport tomorrow, I'll check the doors for the name of Air Canada's club. It's probably something like "Hockey Arena". Now I gotta pack for the trip home. The flight is at 4:00, I wonder if I'll have time to visit the Musee des Beaux-Arts first. Because I want to find out who this Bozart person was. Did he compose wacky calliope music while riding a tricycle? Day 12 (Wednesday, May 12): I'm tired, and my carry-on bags are heavy, so I didn't go to the Musee des Beaux-Arts. I went to the mall to kill a little time and then went to the airport early. Ottawa's airport is pretty small (and very easy to get to from downtown.) The woman behind the counter at the magazine shop saw I was wearing a Senators jersey and struck up a conversation about last night's game, and how much she likes Radek Bonk (who scored the winning goal.) Not that many people in Ottawa wear hockey jerseys when they're not at a game, but, hey, cold weather, layers. And besides if I jammed it into my carry-on bag the big patch on the front would probably get crumpled. Going through American customs was a snap compared to getting into Canada -- as usual. They didn't look inside my bags, pat me down, make me turn on my computer, or anything. They just asked the usual questions (why am I here? do I have any friends?) and let me go. I did make the mistake of being first in line to board the plane, which meant I got my bags searched by an airline guy who remarked that I was wearing "the good jersey" (the black one from last year.) On the plane I again got my choice of newspapers, and again I picked the Ottawa one, because I've figured out that Toronto isn't the capital of Canada. Today's headline: 'WE'RE READY TO GO TO WAR' ...said John Muckler, general manager of the Senators. Trade coverage. With the headline in larger type than any of the headlines about Bush saying the same thing. Okay, so maybe there will be some news somewhere in here which won't be about hockey. I'll just skip ahead to the food section... ...which is also about hockey. Jacques Martin (the Sens' coach) is cooking pine nut herb crusted chicken right here in the newspaper. It was some sort of contest where 40 Senators fans got to watch the coach attempt to cook nouvelle cuisine with help from a real chef. Apparently Spartacat was not involved, which is a shame, because I would have liked to have seen a photo of him shooting the pine nut herb crusted chicken out of his bazooka. Got home safely. Spell-checked this on the train back to my apartment, which was still there, and posted this. -- K. At least, I think I posted this. This computer is sort of wacky. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: confession Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:06:05 +0000 [I wrote this followup while on my way back from Ottawa] Adam (a24061@void.yahoo.void.com) wrote: > > Stacia (stacia@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Kibo's so behind he's not even in the same season the rest of the > > Northern Hemisphere is! He's still in summertime, which explains a lot, > > actually. It would make more sense if he was experiencing summertime in > > ancient Rome, however, but I don't think he'll 'fess up to that. > > Maybe he's _ahead_ of the rest of us! I apologize for posting this two weeks late, but I just got back from a country that uses 24-hour time and puts Latin all over its coins and keeps switching back and forth between English and French during its national anthem, so I am of course very confused. Ottawa is one of the most confusing cities I've ever been in, even if I don't take into account the Ottawa 67s trying to confuse me with three people dressed as two and a half different costumed mascots. I did ascertain that we were probably not still in ancient Rome, because the bog-people exhibit at the Museum of Civilization had one or two things from shortly after the collapse of Rome, and because all the Roman coins at the Museum of Currency looked really, really old. So I checked their display of all American currency ever to see what year it was, and they had a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin but not a Sacagawea dollar, so my best guess is that we're living in 1976. Either that or ancient Rome is trying to fool us by having a Bicentennial. I need to find a calendar to see whether it says "1976" or "MCMLXXVI". Also, in one of my photos of Parliament Hill, the eternal flame went out for a fraction of a second, so I think this means that eternity is now over. Please put your pencils down and wait for the Universe to reboot. Thank you. -- K. Why are costumed mascots inherently creepy? Is it one of the laws of physics? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: It's ME! Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:07:08 +0000 [I composed this followup two weeks late, on my way back from Ottawa] Tony Gies (commander_keen0@socyl.moc) wrote: > > You do not know me. I am a Grand Ultra Lurker Lord who has eavesdropped on > you insane people since 1/8/1999 without making one single post. Let's get > right down to business. > > REASONS YOU SHOULD NOT HATE ME AND BLACKBALL ME AND OSTRACIZE ME LIKE ALL > THE OTHERS DO (*SNIFF*) > > I'm, like, funny or something. Or so I'm told. > > Describe to me any arcade game made between 1970 and now. I can name it, > AND tell you some interesting facts related to it. I'm not sure if this has > any relevance to anything. I can describe any arcade game made before 1970. Or do you continue to deny that history is a sham and we're all living in ancient Rome? The videogames are really violent back here. > I'm fun to yell at, because then I get all apologetic, then I stop to > wonder if you're joking, and then I start getting all indignant and > inadvertently stupid. Oh, I'm such a klutz. > > I can build an Atari. I can build a Nolan Bushnell. (It only takes a little flab.) > [...] > > I know how to make really cool, but harmless, explosions. Do you know how to get Nickelodeon to broadcast that one "Invader Zim" segment they've never bothered airing? The first half of the episode was a segment called "Hobo 13", in which R. Lee Ermey gave Zim training in the use of a powersuit on a lava-covered planet. The second half of the episode, "Walk For Your Lives", described in the program listings as "Zim creates a slowly-expanding explosion," didn't air because Nickelodeon wanted to show an extra fifteen minutes of commercials before "Rugrats". I feel terribly cheated. So please help Zim make a really cool, but slow, explosion. Especially if you can do it in Bob Hope's bowl of oatmeal to see if he can outrun the world's slowest glob of deadly oatmeal. > Thank you for your time. You talk now. Why? What's there to talk about? -- K. Fun fact: I am about to go outside into weather where the wind chill is the same in degrees F and C. In advance, I'm saying: BRR!!! and also METRIC BRR!!! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Found in Pants. Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:08:16 +0000 [written while I was on my way back from my two-week trip] Noah A Christis (hako@null..livejournal.com) wrote: > > GROCERY F$2.49 > GROCERY F$0.79 > PRODUCE F$1.49 > PRODUCE F$1.69 > 0.69lb @ 0.89 > PRODUCE r$.053 > FROZEN F$3.49 > FROZEN F$3.99 > GROCERY F$1.99 > GROCERY F$1.99 > > --------------- > > FRESH @5 BREAD! > GIANT FETA CHSE > BARBASOL I think you made a mistake getting the Giant Feta Cheese Barbasol can instead of a trial-size one. Now you'll have to shave with crumbly cheese for a whole six months. Oh, and about that nougat shampoo you bought? Be careful -- it poses a suffocation risk if you get your head covered in it. > SCHICK SPORT FX > GREEN TEA RHL B > TURKEY HILL TEA > A & W 2LITER > SPECIALSPECIALS > MUELLER PASTA > MUELLER PASTA > OLD MONK SAUCE Old monks require slow cooking in lots of sauce if you don't want them to be stringy. You'll know the monk is ready when he falls apart when you remove his rope belt. > GIANT COT CHSE The biggest problem with cheap Giant Cottage Cheese is that, although you get six gallons of it, it's all one curd. And it's shaped like Potsie from "Happy Days", except with Ottawa's Museum of Civilization where his head should be. > CAPERS & OLIVES > GREEN CABBAGE > > --------------- > > > P PHILIPPINES - PESO > 3000.00 .01438809 > (43.16) > > PAYMENT FROM/TO====== > Cash 40.66 I have no comment on your silly exchange rate. -- K. It could be worse: There could be a typo that said "sexchange rate" and then you'd become 43.16 women.