This play, from a high school football game, started making the rounds of the internet yesterday:

  That one competes with this one, possibly the worst high school football play of all time:

     It’s been ten years since I got an email address.  For ten years, I have been receiving emails about increasing my penis size.  Most of those emails promise me a quick and easy method for doing so.  This is likely the most pervasive email on the internet, a place where almost everything is pervasive.  Except…for this!  If it really was so quick and easy, wouldn’t it be all over the internet?  Why do I have to pay, hasn’t someone posted this for free somewhere?  How come nerds know how to pirate music, DVDs, theatrical films and defense department secrets, but not this?  There’s something fishy here…

     We have two dogs.  One is a tiny skinny fast dog, Rocky, who looks like a fox.  The other is O.D. (Other Dog, not OverDose), is a complacent friendly small fat dog.  Rocky has been bothering O.D. by nibbling her while she sleeps.  He nips her from her head, right down to her ass, like she’s a cob of corn.  Then O.D. snarls and Rocky runs away.  Then the next day he does the same thing.  I think he’s testing O.D. every day, just waiting for the day where she is tasty enough to eat.  So far, luckily, that day has not come.

     Rocky is all about chasing the ball in the backyard.  He’s also all about chasing squirrels.  Yesterday, there was a squirrel at the back of the yard, about 60-70 feet away.  Rocky didn’t see it.  I thought he might like to chase the squirrel and give me a break from the ball while I was barbecueing.  So I threw the ball at the squirrel, thinking he would follow it and get distracted.  He’s very fast, and he’s almost caught a squirrel before.  This time, he definitely caught it.  Because I crippled it with the ball.  But he didn’t do much with it, just let it run away on three legs before he looked back at me with an accusatory face, like “you jerk!  You really hurt that thing!”  And he was right.  I felt like a total jerk.  I actually had trouble sleeping, thinking about the squirrel I had accidentally maimed.  Sorry squirrel.

     It strikes me that fomenting hatred against Muslims is the easiest thing in the world.  All you have to do is say “Muslim” and let people go off on their own.  Oh, there are a lot of opinions out there, most of which are xenophobic and nonsensical.  Yes, those three terrorists arrested yesterday in Ottawa were Muslim.  And yes, the bulk of terrorists who have been arrested in the last ten years have been Muslim.  But does that mean we have to fear Muslims?  Of course it doesn’t.  Every KKK member has, throughout history, been a Christian.  Do we then fear all Christians as racist psychopaths?  Of course we don’t.  Let’s not get stupid, OK?  Same goes for that stupid “ground zero mosque” controversy.  There is no ground zero mosque.  At all.  Such a thing does not exist.  So give it a rest.

     One of those extremists arrested in Ottawa was once a contestant on Canadian Idol.  Seriously?  Is there anything more representative of Western Decadence than Canadian Idol?  Maybe…Starbucks inside Chapters?  Or McDonalds inside Wal-Mart?  Or…Jersey Shore, A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila?  Possibly the instant potatoes my wife just bought – see, they’re frozen, in a bag, and you throw them in a microwave and boom!  Potatoes!  Because throwing a potato in boiling water is just too much work…or Instant KD, maybe?  No.  Canadian Idol and American Idol still reign as the ultimate in North American decadent idiocy.  So what I’m saying is that this would-be jihadist has some serious soul-searching to do when it comes to his obviously half-assed ideology.  By the way, I was once a “contestant” on Canadian Idol as well.  Don’t think any less of me as a result of this man’s actions!

     Saw The Expendables this week.  You know how sometimes you meet up with a bunch of your college buddies, and for the first hour you talk about the old days?  Like, “oh, remember the time you ran into the middle of class the day you had called in sick to congratulate Finch on losing his virginity?  Classic…”  And then you have absolutely nothing left to talk about.  “What you been doing since then?”  “Same old, same old.”  “Oh, OK.  Well, see ya.”  The Expendables is like that.  After an hour, the nostalgia wears off and there’s nothing left but explosions.

     Also saw The Switch, with the always-delightful Jason Bateman and the always-generic Jennifer Aniston.  It’s one of those movies that follows the romantic-comedy template to a T.  All it would take is one moment where Bateman tells Aniston what he’s trying to tell her all movie, and the whole thing would end.  But of course, things keep interrupting him when he tries to tell her that one thing he needs to say, and the movie slowly limps toward a formulaic and painful ending.  Garbage.  Jennifer Aniston has been in exactly two good movies, ever.  Office Space and Friends With Money.  And there has never, ever been an actual reason to see a Jennifer Aniston movie.  Until now.  Aniston is going to, apparently, go full frontal in Judd Apatow’s next movie, Wanderlust.  Her rep says just topless.  Either way, it’s at least a reason to watch.

     Took my 11-year-old stepson to the Ex tonight.  He really wanted a giant stuffed banana.  Don’t fully understand why.  They were giving them away at a gambling game where you put a dollar down on a particular month, then roll a big die.  There are twelve months on the board, and three wild card spaces.  So for 15 dollars, you can be guaranteed a giant banana.  (Which tells me that giant bananas cost less than 15 dollars, in general.)  We spent 28 dollars at that game.  And won no bananas.  Math isn’t a stong suit in this family.  I won a skee-ball game.  Got almost a perfect score, I did.  I won a Finding Nemo fish the size of the palm of my hand.  Ah, the Ex.  I won’t miss you much.

     On the way out of the Ex, we stopped in at the building near the exit.  It was full of booths – a Long & McQuade booth with some cool insturments.  A historical look at old-school games from fairs of years past.  A booth with magnetic jewelry.  Another booth with some vaguely cultish people selling back alignment.  And another booth touting the benefits of the L. Ron Hubbard book Dianetics, with a free Thetan reading or something.  So, an acutal cult selling Scientology.  This building is the Horticultural Centre, one of the historic buildings whose destruction MUST STOP the Landsdowne redevelopment plan.  I once hosted a bikini contest there.  Oh, how I will MISS the Horticultural Centre!

     Glenn Beck is going to be impersonating Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday.  He will be delivering a speech.  Of some kind.  And thousands of people are expected to turn up for this…event?  What will he say?  What will he do?  Does anyone care?  I must admit, it’s sort of compelling to me.  I kind of HAVE to know what bonkers idiocy that maniac is going to be unveiling.  I kind of HAVE to know what it is he thinks is worth making a speech in the same place, on the same date, as MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech took place.  Then again, if the world was going to explode, and collapse upon it’s own idiocy, Saturday appears to be the most appropriate time for that to take place.

     I ate at a fancy restaurant that didn’t post it’s calorie count.  You can get a calorie count at McDonalds.  I suspect that the sauce on my chicken contained as many calories, by itself, as a Big Mac.  A Big Mac costs me 3 bucks.  Or something.  I haven’t had one in a while.  I don’t eat at fast food places because they are bad for me.  I think I should probably use the same rule for nice restaurants.  I expect they are bad for me as well.  I made my own pork tenderloin tonight.  It was delicious.

     Hey – big ups to the Professional Food Group, the people who deliver me the freezer-ful of meat every year.  It’s a little expensive, but great cuts of meat from local farmers only.  They screwed up my order a very small amount (I asked for 35 pounds of bacon and 8 pounds of inside round steak, and they reversed the two).  Instead of taking back all that extra steak and replacing it with bacon, they are just bringing me the bacon.  And letting me keep the steak.  I may never have been so pleased.  By the way – I remember my wedding anniversary only because it comes six days after Meat Day!

     There are two sports at which women can make a living without having a second job.  Golf and tennis.  There are like fifty for men.  Kinda sucks, eh?

     Before I go away on vacation, I thought I would write a post plugging a few things.  Since it’s going to be the top post for a week…first, I’m still soliciting donations for the Drop Zone in September, when I will be scaling the Delta Hotel tower to help raise money for Easter Seals and kids with disabilities.  Several people have already donated generously, and so it now occurs to me that I can’t back out if people have donated money.  So I may as well go for as many donations as possible.  Just click the image of big-fat-me on the right hand side of this page.

     Also, go check out Eliades Ochoa at Barrymore’s tomorrow night.  A true music legend, part of the Buena Vista Social Club, tickets are only $45 each, and there are still plenty available.  www.ticketmaster.ca

     OK, that’s it.  Back in a week.

     There is still hope David Gilmour will choose Ottawa as the one tour stop on Roger Waters’ The Wall tour where he will make his “surprise” (scheduled) appearance.  Gilmour has agreed to join Waters at one single show during that tour.  Gilmour will be doing this because Waters agreed to join him during a benefit for The Hoping Foundation last month.  That reunion has generated a lot of buzz, and the videos have now been posted to the internet.  Here they are, Waters and Gilmour together:

     Those videos are from Oxfordshire, UK, on July 10th 2010.

     Looks like I will be unable to get out of the Drop Zone – that deal where people rappel down the Delta Hotel in Ottawa for Easter Seals.  Much as I dread the whole thing, I think the worst part of the whole deal has been the fact that I now bear the moniker “fatman”, and I will certainly be given a really irritating, horrible looking costume.  One that probably involves a cape.  But I thought that with the superhero theme, I ought to research the deluded individuals who call themselves real-life superheroes.  And a few caught my eye. 

     Like Razorhawk, seen above.  The best line in that stellar interview?  “I saw a lot of crime when I worked at a gas station…”  I found that particular interview, and several other hilarious ones, all cobbled together on one very funny webpage.  Click here to go to that webpage.  And remember – you can still sponsor me, and Easter Seals, by clicking my very-fat picture on the right hand side of the page!

     I had to wonder.  Who, in their right mind, would go up to the top of the Delta Hotel in Ottawa, then leap off and rappel down to the ground?  What, exactly, could convince someone that was a good idea?  Is there really any pleasure to be derived from coming down a building like Spider-Man?  I don’t know.  But apparently lots of people think this is a great plan, since lots of people will be doing this for Easter Seals on September 27th. 

     Yes, you too can participate in this event.  You can sign up, and collect pledges, and then Spider-Man your way down a building in September.  Click here to sign up, if you think it’s a good idea.  Although why you would do it on purpose is beyond me.  I will be doing it also.  Not exactly on purpose.  I think Doc’s a little sour at me because I keep defeating him in our daily trivia game or something.  And because the concept of leaping off a building for any reason scares the hell out of me, he decided on Friday that I would be doing just that.  So on September 27th, I will be superhero-ing my way down the building.  And somehow, I will not be doing so as Spider-Man (the obvious choice) but as the new superhero FatMan.  Thanks guys.  Here’s an example of what this looks like:

     So that’s it.  That’s what I have to look forward to for a whole month now.  I’m frightened enough at the idea today, I imagine by September 27th I’ll be shaking in my FatMan suit.  On the plus side, I can raise a little bit of money for the Easter Seals while I’m doing this, so maybe that will ease the pain some.  As I said, you can sign up for this now also, or you can sponsor me.  To do so, either click on the picture of big-fat-me on the right hand side of the page, or just click here.  Who knows?  Maybe if I raise enough money I can just be an honorary Drop Zone member or something.  I can supervise, and maybe I won’t have to actually do it?

     Who doesn’t love a good game of ping-pong?  Nobody!  I must admit I can’t recall the last time I played ping-pong sober.  I expect it was when I was nine years old, in my grandpa’s basement.  But then, I can’t recall a single time, ever, where I haven’t enjoyed a good, hard-fought table-tennis tournament.  And so I bring you the inaugural Ottawa Charity Ping-Pong Tournament, being held August 27th at the Capital Music Hall, 128 York Street.  It’s a Friday, it starts at 7:00, and that means that beer will be served.

     There are only 100 slots available for potential tournament players, but there are still a few available.  Registration deadline is Tuesday, August 24th, so get in on this now!  Just click here to register, and you’re in!  Rory Gardiner will be playing later that evening, so entertainment will not be restricted to just beer and ping-pong.  But then, what else would you want, for an entertaining evening?  Invite everyone you know who could get into something so fun and ludicrous.  Tickets (which include a minimum of three games) are either $30 or $50, depending on the package you select.  (Full package descriptions at the same website address.)

     Full disclosure – I’m making this suggestiong because the charity tournament is raising money for three great local charities – the Youth Services Bureau, Christie Lake Kids, and the charity with which I am personally involved, Operation Come Home.  So yes, this is a blatant plea for funds.  But it’s also beer and ping-pong, in a tournament format.  And I can get behind that.