Idiot Sightings

IDIOT SIGHTING
We had to have the garage door repaired. The Sears repairman told us that one of our problems was that we did not have a "large" enough motor on the opener. I thought for a minute, and said that we had the largest one Sears made at that time, a 1/2 horsepower. He shook his head and said, "Lady, you need a 1/4 horsepower." I responded that 1/2 was larger than 1/4. He said, "NO, it's not." Four is larger than two.." We haven't used Sears repair since.

IDIOT SIGHTING
My daughter and I went through the McDonald's take-out window and I gave the clerk a $5 bill. Our total was $4.25, so I also handed her a quarter. She said, "you gave me too much money." I said, "Yes I know, but this way you can just give me a dollar bill back." She sighed and went to get the manager who asked me to repeat my request. I did so, and he handed me back the quarter, and said "We're sorry but they could not do that kind of thing." The clerk then proceeded to give me back $1 and 75 cents in change.Do not confuse the clerks at McD's in Petawawa, Ont

IDIOT SIGHTING:
I live in a semi rural area. We recently had a new neighbour call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING sign on our road. The reason: "Too many deer are being hit by cars out here! I don't think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore." From Kingston, Ont.

IDIOT SIGHTING IN FOOD SERVICE:
My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco. She asked the person behind the counter for "minimal lettuce." He said he was sorry, but they only had iceberg lettuce.
From the City of Pembroke

IDIOT SIGHTING:
I was at the airport, checking in at the gate when an airport employee asked, "Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?" To which I replied, "If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?" He smiled knowingly and nodded, "That's why we ask."Happened at Uplands in Ottawa

IDIOT SIGHTING:
The stoplight on the corner buzzes when it's safe to cross the street. I was crossing with an intellectually challenged coworker of mine. She asked if I knew what the buzzer was for. I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red. Appalled, she responded, "What on earth are blind people doing driving?!" She was a probation officer in Gatineau, QC

IDIOT SIGHTING:
This happened at a good-bye luncheon for an old and dear coworker who was leaving the company due to "downsizing." Our manager commented cheerfully, "This is fun. We should do this more often." Not another word was spoken. We all just looked at each other with that deer-in-the-headlights stare. This was a lunch at Suncor, Fort McMurray,Alberta

IDIOT SIGHTING:
I work with an individual who plugged her power strip back into itself and for the sake of her life, couldn't understand why her system would not turn on.A clerk at the Campbell's Bay Court House, no less.

IDIOT SIGHTING:When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it. We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the drivers side door. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked. "Hey," I announced to the technician, "its open!" His reply, "I know. I already got that side." This was at the Ford dealership in Renfrew, Ont

STAY ALERT!They walk among us... and the scary part is that they VOTE and they REPRODUCE !

Why Men Die Before Women

A series of advertisements. Have NO idea WHAT is being advertised, but I suspect it is a women's fashion store of some kind.

Fashion

These are dresses made entirely out of condoms.

I am trying to come up with a witty comment....something about dressing appropriately for the sport, but somehow, words seem to fail me.

Monday Blahs.

There are times........

The Darwin Awards

For years, the Darwin Awards have been given to people whom we are most glad that they have successfully taken themselves out of the gene pool. The 2007 awards are being voted on now!

A sample of this year's entries...


An unnamed patient at the local clinic told my neighbor that he had serious internal injuries, including a ruptured eyeball, total hearing loss in one ear, and both legs amputated mid-thigh, as the result of a fishing accident. Also the man damaged both gonads, qualifying him for the Darwin Award.
He had been standing at the end of a dock with a bucket of dynamite, 2-inch chunks each fused and capped. He lit the fuse, cocked his arm for the throw, and dropped that chunk of dynamite into the bucket of dynamite.
Instantly recognizing the serious situation he was in, the man dove off the dock. But water is incompressible. It transferred the force of the explosion, in line with the blast, against his body.
One doctor was heard to remark that it was good that this patient had lost his balls, as it removed him from the gene pool.



http://www.darwinawards.com/personal/personal2007-02.html

And then there is the remarkable case of the Iraqi insurgents who stole the brass from the anti-tank shells. With hammer and chisel. While smoking.

Ya just gotta read 'em and weep!

Artifacts from the mary Rose

This is the great anchor being recovered from the bed of the Solent. click on the images to enlarge.

This cannon is a "stave" cannon...that is, it is made of long narrow bars of bronze bound together like a barrel. (I know, it looks like steel in the above pic, but guys...look at the steel in the anchor! This cannon is made from much more corrosion resistant material! They are really interesting since stave cannons are usually "breech loaded". The lion, of course, is an old old symbol of England.

Thus endeth the lesson for today.

Mary Rose

The Mary Rose sits in an atmospherically controlled dry dock in Portsmouth's historic dockyard. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose will be reunited with thousands of objects spilled from her shattered hull in 1545 through a £21m grant for a new museum.

there was delight at Portsmouth's historic dockyard, where the ship and contents have been undergoing conservation work since 1982, when half the hull was recovered. The historian David Starkey, an authority on Tudor history and patron of the project, said: "This is England's Pompeii or Herculaneum, a ship which went down at a recorded point in time, so quickly that it took all the contents with her, preserving a slice of 16th-century military and everyday life."

The Mary Rose broke in two when it sank within sight of Portsmouth harbour on July 19 1545, possibly because it was top-heavy with the new guns Henry had given his favourite ship.
Since then more than 19,000 objects have been recovered, mostly perfectly preserved by the deep silt of the Solent seabed, including weapons and uniforms, the barber-surgeon's wide-brimmed hat and saws for lopping injured limbs, the captain's silver tankards and the crew's rough pottery mugs, a manicure set, playing cards and an opulent inlaid backgammon set.

Full article about the funding of a museum for the Mary Rose can be found here.....http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2246615,00.html

Something else to visit when I go back across "the pond".

Pictures from Mars!

Oh look! Off in the distance....that looks like...could it be? Life?

No, not likely. However I went to the trouble to upload the whole panorama over on my other blog....http://southtowerarmouringguild.blogspot.com. There you see the true scale!

Sam's armour

click on images to enlarge. Bill's version
Ingres's version.

This is Karen, wearing Sam's armour. Its guy armour, but she looks pretty good in it.

Just love Ingres....even with the wasp waist which was the fashion of the time, the armour is very.......um.........iconographic. (Kinda nice to use that word about a saint's fashion choices...its sort of appropirate.......grin!)

One is NOT a copy of the other; the similarities are kind of neat though.

(I think I'll repost this on my armour blog, and discuss the styling a bit more. http://www.southtowerarmouringguild.blogspot.com/)

Signs

click on the images to enlarge!
He, I been there I think! I'm pretty sure that dis must.....

Good thing they posted this important information!

Hey Jim how deep is that bottomless pit anyway?

Words to live by!

I am speechless.

Good advice....

Yes ossiffer, alcohol WAS involved...

Oh dear!

And THAT's THAT!

Blogs are vanishing!

I was on another blog t'other day and it was a "writer's" blog. That is to say, the author was using her blog as a sounding board for snippets of writing, character development, that sort of thing. I don't think a blog is the perfect thing for that since one rarely gets truly critical feedback, but because of the archival nature of blogger, it is useful to organize these things, rather like filing recipes. This archival nature is what distinguishes the web log from the ICQ, or any facebook style social networking site.

What little writing I have done, I believe should follow certain laid down paths...build an outline, creating the introduction, develop the back story, create conflict, resolution and a satisfactory denoument. Then of course, as Mozart said, all thats left is scribbling! Blogs, of course, are none of the above!

I have used, and shall continue to use my blogs as places to tell jokes, rant, and discuss armour making. All in a manner reminiscient of filing recipes, or maybe, scrap booking. And the world shall continue to be etched onto this blog! I shall continue to resist what my friend called "crack book".

Doggies

Would be nice to share!!!

Dog tired.

Which is what I am, of course, right now. I put a nice post on my armouring blog, and ranted a bit on my rant blog, so this will have to do for today. This is Charlotte the Collie who was visiting us while her masters went to Disney World. And of course, Tavi, who was keeping Charlotte from getting ANY rest. As soon as Charlotte got home, she was asleep. I really don't care that she was breaking training....I am like the indulgent Grandpa who spoils the kids.

Quotes

I let the masters speak for themselves......grin!

Prague in May...sigh....

A little panorama...This is a square in Prague. Don't know what name it is, or what random churches are represented....I just found the panorama to be quite restful on the eyes. What you don't hear is the jazz music coming from the church on the left, being advertised aggressively by the prettiest girls they could find to hold the banner.
Above is the same scene, but a bit to the left of the top pic. I love the sailor leaning up against the lamp post....he looks like he stepped out of n Ingmar Bergman film.

And as we draw back a big and look a little more to the left, we see the sun illuminating a statue of a saint. Probably St. Wenceslas...looking out on his fields crisp and even. Actually, snow is now a not so fond memory since this is May, the time of Spring and in a week or so there will be flowers everywhere!

I don't know how old this entrance to a cathedral garden is...I am betting that it dates back to the Vikings!

Heck, those flat tiles in the arches!....they might even be salvaged from Roman buildings! Anyway, its been here a spell. The paving stones in front of this entrance show considerable wear from centuries of people going in and out of this building.

These pictures are a lot nicer when you click to enlarge them.

Reminisciences

I told this story before....but its still a good 'un. This time of year makes me think about the times I spent fixing "Tracker" airplanes in Newfoundland. Winter time was our busy time because we would be supporting the search and rescue people in the very unforgiving North Atlantic Ocean, plus dealing with all those factory ships stealing our fish.

(another story of the characters I met while on Detached Duty..."on Det" in Torbay Newfoundland sometime in the late '90s.)

A poser, technically speaking, is somebody who is attempting to be something they are not. In particular, something they perceive their peer group expects them to be. When they suceed, they often get promoted, when they fail, they get branded a "Poser". Military people meet them all the time....the foul mouth drill sergeant who raises flowers, and has to psych himself up to stand there and shout at the troopies. The pay accounts clerk who drops her paycheck into the G-string of the male stripper on"Ladies Night"and leaves him in the parking lot well out of site of her girfriends.

All the folks who sow their wild oats all week, and go to church on Sunday to pray for a crop failure.Guys have this bad, and military guys even more so. The stories and rumours of infidelities among military guys is statistically unlikely, and surprisingly enough (especially to our wives who talk about us incessantly in coffee klatches) the stories are mostly not true.

Which brings us to the biggest Poser I ever knew, Pierre C. (Name is truncated to protect the damned guilty!) A Man's Man, big, tough, works out in a gym he actually pays for instead of the one on the base, talks big. According to Pierre, he has laid with every woman in St. John, Summerside, Halifax, Trenton and as far as I know, Tim Buc Tu. He used to say with great emphasis and meaning "What Happens on Det STAYS on Det". Which I suspect means something like "I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me." Yeah, fine, whatever. I worked with his wife, and just decided that the less I dealt with this guy, the better me, my career and my mental health would stay. But on this occasion, he was the Master Corporal 2 i c of the Detached Duty team in Torbay Newfoundland that I was assigned to.


So one fine evening as the fog finally grounded the airplanes after a bee-och of 13 hour shift, yet again, we were sittin' around the common room in the barracks. Frying sausages, shooting the breeze, swapping lies. We were all pretty tired...it had been a long day, and some had ducked over to George Street to listen to the music and have a few brewskies before bedding down. There was a 6AM launch, so by ten, most of us had made it back home and were watching Hockey Night In Canada. Just like in a movie, the door opens, and in comes Pierre, all quiet like. Not like him at all!

So he brings us a bottle of Woods Dark Rum (my favorite!) and says "hey guys, I got a girl here, stay out of my room for the next hour or so eh!". So I sez to Pierre....Well, bring her in here for a drink Pete, we won't bite! Pierre gets kind of evasive, and says he has to go, she's waitin in his room for him. "Enjoy the bottle, and I'll see you all in the morning" . Why was this odd? Well, we were a really small det, and we each had rooms to ourselves that trip. Privacy is something we had, and jealously guarded when we managed to get it. So, like , Pierre didn't have to tell us to not bother him, in fact there was no reason other than bragging to inform us of his situation. And that business with the bottle. Well, he WAS an openhanded sort, but rarely like this. Something fishy here.

Clever guy this Pierre. He knew the first thing we would do as soon as we heard his door close is creep real silent like down the hallway, and put a glass to the door. (Oh come on, you'd a done the same!) So heres the three of us, listening at the door. We can hear a man's voice, the sound of shoes hitting the floor. Four shoes...good sign. Then the squeak of the iron army bed. A pause, and another squeek, then another. Then a nice rythymic squeeking! "Ah" said I, "The game is afoot". (Or slurred words to that effect). We went back to the common room, the guys were all buzzing about what kind of a guy this Pierre is, and what would we tell his wife, (Hey, you KNOW, what happens on Det STAYS on Det eh!) , and maybe there was just a tiny touch of envy.
Then, I had an idea.
Many ideas I had in those days I blame on the skinfull of black pusser rum, causes me to do things I shouldn't. ....so I suggested that perhaps we should get a look at this cutie. He is on the ground floor, right? Uh huh. We could see the light under the door so the light is on right? Uh huh. Maybe he didn't pull his curtains? You could almost see the lights come on behind their eyes as they suddenly got it. So, we turned the TV up a little louder, and snuck outside, tramping through the snow to peek into Pete's window.


What we saw was Lucky Pierre, the Man's Man, "woman in every port", the guy who cheated on his wife by his own admission every chance he got, sitting on his bed, all by himself, bouncing up and down on the mattress, making the springs squeek. "Right," we all agreed later. "This guy really IS a devoted family man, and a good father, a hard worker, who wants us to believe that he is this drunken cheatin' bastard. We know his secret now...he's a good man after all! All that cheating and hard drinking stuff! Thats bogus!"What a Poser!"


But oh damn....we can't tell anybody. Because what happens on Det STAYS on det.

Toilets...

Nah, don't bother clicking to enlarge...it really doesn't get any better...

There is no doubt a reason.

Ha! A Royal Flush!

Advertisements

click on the images to enlarge.

Certainly not I!
Hmmmm....Truth in Advertising Indeed!

Now that's just Wrong....

"Your shit is my bread and butter". Of course.....

Now how many times would I LOVE to have found one of these places on my travels.

The three wise women

Last Day on the Job

Yeah...they ARE photoshopped. So? Still a good giggle in the morning!