Teddy Muhammad

Have you heard about the latest outrage perpetrated against Islam? A primary school teacher in Khartoum (wherever that is) had the goddam nerve to name a teddy bear "Muhammad". Can you believe it? Luckily, a fellow teacher reported the atrocity and now this monstrous enemy of Islam faces swift and just punishment, possibly including forty lashes.

[I'll find a link to the story later. I gotta go to work, man.]

Later... Here is the link.

Suspicious Parcel!

Something out of the ordinary happened this morning at work. You may know that I work in a mailroom. Well, after having emptied the mailbag onto the desk, I noticed a large white envelope that seemed to have scribbles all over it, and three stamps placed haphazardly in the top right-hand corner. There are two big colour posters on the mailroom wall that show an example of a suspicious parcel. This envelope I was looking at matched at least two points on the checklist, for sure. The envelope looked like it had been addressed by a madman. Almost every word was misspelled and there were squiggles and arrows and other strange marks all over the place. The back of the envelope was similar. The return address was almost impossible to read, appearing to have been scribbled by somebody in the middle of a seizure. That was also surrounded by odd markings. Secondly, there were too many postage stamps. Excessive postage is another indicator of a suspicious parcel. OK, so another indicator is a bulky or rigid envelope, and guess what? That's right, this one was bulky. It felt like there were various strange objects inside. All this added up to one thing: this envelope must not be opened, but reported to supervisor! Supervisor arrived and I showed her. She agreed that it was suspicious and that there was no way in the world that she would open it, so the next step was to notify our Security Manager. He came in and inspected the envelope and confirmed our suspicions that this was a definite candidate for serious and careful attention. He raced off to summon the police.

Later in the morning I found out the result of the police visit. They decided it was very suspicious and x-rayed it three times! Yep, three times. The first time they thought they saw a wire. The Security Manager told me that at that moment, he felt a shiver, a shadow of impending doom. However, two subsequent x-rays must have negated the wire theory, and when the envelope was finally opened, it was found to be a request to be considered for a volunteer position, but also contained mysterious objects like feathers and doll parts.

But that's not all! This afternoon I received an email requesting my attendance at a debriefing on the incident next Monday morning between 1100 and 1130 hours. I've never been to a debriefing before, so I can't wait!

Bell's Milk Bar

How cool is this place? I wasn't even around in the '50s, but its pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

Oh well, another one to add to the 'Places To Visit Before I Die' list.

Douchebag Alert

Perhaps you have noticed that some people like to use the word "meh" in their writing. They use that idiotic word in an attempt to convey how unimpressed they are about whatever it is.
These people are douchebags.

Words of Wisdom

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau

(This was the quote from my desk calender for 17/18 November, and it's good advice! Also, Thoreau's Walden is one of my favourite books.)

Robert Shields, Wordy Diarist

I've been reading the obituaries in the newspaper for some years now, and once in a while it pays off big time. I found this one in 5 November's Sydney Morning Herald, but it's an edited version from 29 October's New York Times:

Robert Shields, Wordy Diarist, Dies at 89

Many of us have kept diaries in one form or another, but this man took it to a whole other level. 'He knocked out three million words in his best years, a million in slow ones.'

Also, here is a link to an interview with Robert Shields by David Isay from Sound Portraits.

Here's another link from the Kircher Society. The longest reader comment, down near the end, is from Shields's daughter Heidi.

Wasps

Does anything eat wasps?

Blogger Back?

Wow, Blogger seems to be working again. I wonder if anybody else found it impossible to log on for the past seven days.
Well, if it really is working again, time to party.