Car Alarm Responder Man

Category: Humour

Noam Chomsky considered by many to be the pre-eminent intellectual in the United States was talking about the ‘War On Terror’ in the context of Governments controlling people through fear.

Chomsky cited an example of manipulation through fear. He said that every night, in his Boston neighbourhood, someone’s car alarm goes off. Chomsky adds: ‘what are these people afraid of ?’ going on to suggest that car Alarm System companies market fear to entice people into installing overpriced alarm systems in their vehicles. Then Chomsky added ‘Nobody does anything about car alarms anyway, so what is the point?’


…and this is where Chomsky and I part…..


Well, nobody except CAR ALARM RESPONDER MAN that is.


Meet Carman (Car Alarm Responder Man) a mild mannered grocery clerk by day, he dons a super hero outfit at night, wandering Boston neighbourhoods waiting for tell-tale car alarms to go to the rescue.

WHAHH! WHEE! WHAHH! WHEE! WHAHH! WHEE! WHAHH! WHEE!


There’s one! Carman rushes to the rescue and spots the car. WHAHH! WHEE! ‘There’s no one here. Drat, the culprit has fled!’. Now Carman must find the cars owners and alert them that someone tried to break into their car. He rushes to the apartment building nearby.

Bang! Bang! Ding! Dong! Hello! Hello! Pressing on every button Carman shouts ‘Hello! Hello! Does anyone own a 2006 maroon Chevy Malibu license plate BR1272? Hello Anyone? Hello!’.

One bleary voiced tenant answers through the speaker ‘Is that you Carman?’. ‘Yes! It is. Someone’s car alarm went off. I’m trying to alert the owner!’. ‘It’s one thirty in the morning Carman!’. ‘Yes I know. Thank you. It’s no problem. That’s what I’m here for’ .

The car alarm shuts off. Carman rushes back outside.

Outside the building Carman sees all the lights in the building come on only to hear another car alarm sound off around the next corner. His job is done here. He’s off.

A small group gathers at the door. ‘What the hell?’ says one disheveled tenant. ‘Who’s the idiot’? ‘Oh! That Carman’ says one tenant shaking his head. ‘Don’t worry he’s off to save someone else now’.

Postscript

The next day, a proud but tired Carman, now back at the Grocery store, drops a bag of oranges upon hearing a car horn go off in the parking lot. He looks around. No-one sees his apprehension. His secret is safe. More importantly, the night is safe, thanks to…

Car Alarm Responder Man.

Oh! The Humanity (Frankie Amuck)

Category: Humour

The movie industry is moving away from using live actors and in some instances, as seems to be the case with the latest Superman, they are morphing a live actor into a character that can be sold on video games.

God must be looking down on this and thinking that he could have saved himself a lot of trouble and saved humanity much grief if he had created cartoon characters instead of these fragile complicated Human beings.

I can imagine God musing over Willy Coyote who steps into a cloud, thinking that he is still on dry land, only to plunge to the Mesa floor down below with a fading whistling sound and a final ‘Pfft!’ or God thinking about Daffy Duck who turns his beak around after having it shot off by Elmer Fudd’s shotgun then saying ‘Lettstry did again!’ In the end the Coyote and Daffy Duck are always good as knew.

In a cartoon world all victims of car accidents go Splat! They also peel their own faces off the windshield with a Spoing! There’s never any blood or broken bones.

...Wait! Something funny is happening.... As I write this story I can feel myself fading away. It looks like I have been erased and redrawn into a two dimensional figure. I look at my hands and I now have only four fingers. I look down at my body and it has been cut across from left to right and down the middle (Drawn and quartered! God’s little joke. I get it.) to my... ‘Yikes! THEY'RE gone!'

Now my computer mouse has grown eyes and ears and my cats has become a Halloween cat. His hair is standing straight up. His back is impossibly arched upwards. The mouse pulls its tail out of the computer and takes off. The cat gives chase.

I have to stop the cat before he wrecks the house. Now steam is coming out of my ears. Papers fly behind me as I chase after the cat. As I run, rugs curl up under my feet and pots and pans are strewn all over the place. Now a dog I never knew I had is chasing after the cat. The cat is now hanging from the ceiling. Rowf! Rowf! Ma-Rrrrow!. The mouse trembles and squeaks.

‘This could work’ – God is thinking. ‘Let’s try the DELETE key. Sproink! God leans back, hands behind his head, smiling.

That's all Folks!

If I Listen Hard Enough

Category: Poem

This poem was written by my friend Terry Barker 10 years ago. Terry is now 79 and he's still the smartest and best looking fellow on the Sunshine Coast. Here's a photo of Terry.


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If I listen hard enough
to what’s happening in the basement of my eyes,
I can hear the tinny crash and rattle
of collapsing rods and cones.

Things are breaking down.

I know I must confess to
dying taste buds, loss of sexual vigour,
passing of old friends, and
thin struggling streams
(once waterfalls, floods, great Fundy tides)
that weakly pump past ballooning prostate,
the cough that won’t go away.

Well, I can live with all that.

It’s the price of a long life.

But O God it hurts
to lose at last the fresh sting
of the impertinent slippery clarinet slide
that once raised Gershwin gooseflesh,
and in place of ecstasy, say, wisely,
O yes, of course, that’s Rhapsody in Blue:
to always know what words always always always follow
Let me not to the marriage of true minds….
and what’s worse, to know for utter utter utter certain
that they will never ever ever ever change:
to smell the rose and note
that yes, its scent is exactly the same
as it was yesterday.

To see Thelma and Louise and say,
O, another chase movie.

If I could have one wish, it would be
to hear and see and smell these beloved things
once more
for the first time.

Christmas Jell-O

Category: Humour

When I was a boy we were too poor to own a Christmas tree so my dad would load us up into his station wagon and take us the to the Christmas Jell-O lot.

On the way over we would pass the Christmas tree lot and my father would sigh wistfully ‘maybe another year.’

When we got to the Christmas Jell-O lot a man clapping his heavy mitts to keep warm would come out of his pickup-truck and cut up a nice piece of green Christmas Jell-O then help my dad tie it to the roof of the car.

We’d take it home and lean it against the living room wall, then decorate it, and hang lights on it . At the top we would hang a shining star.

Later we would put on ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ and sing ‘Oh! Christmas Jell-O, Oh! Christmas Jell-O’ along with Snoopy. We pretended to flip our feet and howl at the star radiating on top of the Christmas Jell-O, just as Snoopy howled at his Christmas tree.

On Christmas morning we would hurry to the living room and see of all kinds of presents under the Christmas Jell-O.

We would unwrap each gift in a hurry then, afterward, we would run around the house holding a toy airplane up in the air humming "Ni-Rowrrrr!" or tote a plastic handgun shouting "Bang! Bang!"

At dinner we would eat turkey and I would look at the green Christmas Jell-O with its star shining brightly at the top.

After about two weeks my dad would put the Christmas Jell-O by the curb for pickup. There were other Christmas Jell-Os by the curbside but ours was always the nicest.

With every Christmas we looked forward to the Christmas Jell-O and we would scarcely notice the spruce trees or the fir trees on the way to get another Christmas Jell-O.

No. For us, nothing could beat the Christmas Jell-O sitting on top of my dads station wagon, casting its pale green glow under the cold winter moon.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

McMarine

Category: Humour

Having visited an actual Marine Corps base at Camp LeJeune North Carolina many years ago, I could not help speculating afterwards, what a conversation between a MacDonald’s Sergeant, and a Private ordering at the on-base drive-through, would sound like:

McD: Whalecome to McDonald’s. May I hep yew, maggit?

Pvt: Ayed laike two Big Makes, two lodge fraz’n a Coke puleeze.

McD: PULEEZE WUT PRIVUT!

Pvt: PULEEZE SU!

McD: That’s two Big Makes, two lodge fraz’n a Coke. Is that ko-rect maggit?

Pvt: Yass dat’s ko-rect su!

McD: Ah kain’t hear yew!

Pvt: YASS SU dat’s KO-RECT SU!

McD: AH STILL KAIN’T HEAR YEW MAGGIT!

Pvt: YASS SU DAT’S CO RECT SU. TWO BIG MAKES, 2 LODGE FRAZ’NS A COKE SU!

McD: Advance to the next window on the double. MOVE IT MOVE IT MOVE IT!!!

Pvt: YES SU! ROT A WAY SU!

Elementary Watson!

Category: Humour

Where physics meets what’s on television

Periodic Table of Television Elements

Element - Properties
__________________________________________________________

Tvon - Primal element and a necessary to the creation of all other elements. Oddly enough Tvon - unlike Masson (see Masson below) - has no mass.

Boron - An element that just spins around and around. Boring!

NFLon - Element known for passing an oblong shaped particle between two ends of a field.

Golfon - Just below boron in the periodic table.

Masson - Sometimes referred to as Jesuson. Can sometimes be interpreted as either Golfon or Boron.

Jesuson - See Masson above.

Getiton - One of the least talked about elements, it is usually observed in the dark and can be found higher up in the list of elements.

Hadron (No. I said Hadron) - Usually created as a result of exposure to Getiton.

Parentalcontrolon - Like Tvnoton (see below) this is a rare element and is usually invoked in conjunction with Getiton.

Wackion - Reason for existence of Parentalcontrolon (see Getiton and Hadron above).

Ohissheon - Usually a created as a result of exposure to Grammy waves. Ephemeral in nature and has a short lifespan.

Ohisheon - See Ohissheon.

Sameshiton - Mimics other elements. Like Getiton can be found higher up in the periodic list.

Whatson - See Sameshiton.

Newshiton - See Turkeyson (below).

Hon - Usually comes in pairs and highly interactive with other elements

Trydison - Not really an element. More an aggravating quark of one Hon during NFLon. Usually met with Notnowhon (See also Amifathon).

Notnowhon - See Trydison.

Adon - The appropriate place for appearance of Trydison.

Amifaton - Unstable element usually avoided and sometimes resulting in Couchon.

Couchon - See Amifaton and NFLon.

Turkeyson - Usually only seen during Thanksgiving and Newshiton.

Tvnoton - Rare. Theoretical element thought to exist as natural offshoot of Tvon.

Enlightenment

Category: Humour

My wife and I were in Stowe Vermont over a long weekend in 2006. One evening we were walking by a church after the sun had set. Coming from the church bright yellow light streamed through the windows.

I thought this was very odd as there were no cars parked in the church lot. And looking through the windows I couldn’t see a soul, only light.

So I turned to my wife (and this would be a good place to stop reading) and said 'I guess this is proof that photons have mass'

Cow Tools

Category: Humour

Every year for about two months leading up to Christmas (Oh! Excuse me THE HOLIDAYS) you see these ads on TV for tools targeted at woman as gifts for their husbands at Christmas ( I can see Rhonda pulling a pair of pliers from her tool belt, her eyes narrowing, as she reads this story).

Relax. Let us assume for the sake of this story that tools are generally the purview of men OK?

Now this brings me to the title of this story and answers to your two question: ‘Why is this story called Cow Tools’? and ‘Is this guy suicidal’?

Here goes… the tools advertised around Christmas are what fall in the category of what I call ‘all purpose, not found in nature, useless tools that no self-respecting man would use’.

No man wants one tool to do a bunch of things. How can you open up your toolkit with other guys standing around and have them stare at The-Only-Tool-You’ll-Ever-Need-9000 sitting all by its lonesome, like the new born baby Jesus, at the bottom of your toolkit. You’d be laughed out of town.

The other problem is that these things really don’t work. They are all predicated on that as*hole Butler who invented (coincidentally enough) the Butler screwdriver that noisy piece of sh*t that requires you to fish around for one bit, then unscrew the end, then put the bit in, then screw it back in, then zzzzzz!.

Gary Larson creator of ‘The Far Side’ cartoons had a great insight into this. In what is probably considered his most controversial work he drew a cartoon where a bunch of cows stood around a table looking at cow tools (no Rhonda.. I’m talking about tools for how-now-brown-cows. Put those pliers away), a bunch of misshapen metalic forms, the purpose of which no human could possibly understand.

So. The stuff you see on TV! Those are cow tools.

Will the Aye-Aye go Bye-Bye?

Category: Poem

Here’s a poem my friend Terry Barker wrote after reading an article called ‘The World's Most Endangered Primate’ published in ‘The Vancouver Sun’ June 10, 1992.

____________________________________________________

Will the Aye-Aye go Bye-Bye?

The world's most endangered
primate by far

is the Night Prowler Aye-Aye
of Madagascar.

All over the planet,
good folks wonder why
we spell it like ai-ai but
pronounce it eye-eye.

He has eyes like a tree frog
and ears like a bat,
a long middle finger
and the bum of a rat.

An Aye-Aye was born
in the States recently,
the first Aye-Aye bred
in captivity.

How lonely to live
in a cage high and dry,
the last of your species,
O unhappy Aye-Aye.

And as you grow old,
will you wish by and by
for feminine friendship,
a lady Aye-Aye?

Being born in captivity
is a blessing for science,
but not for the members
of lonely Aye-Aye-ence.

So while scientists gather
for their seminar,
God bless you, Night Prowler
of Madagascar.

Spam spam spam*

Category: Article

Every day I delete between 20 and 30 spam e-mails. I pointed out to my wife once that the writing in most spam was gibberish.

It finally dawned on me that spammers, being keen to find workarounds to spam filters, preface their pitch with bits of random prose so that the spam filters, presumably looking at only a few words or sentences, will let the message go through. In addition the spammer hides the real message from the Mail server inside a graphic.

Take the following spam message for instance. The message starts with random text then ends with an graphic image which contains the real message that the sender wants you to see. Because the message is a graphic image it cannot be analyzed by spam filters.

of women - them that would sell their shifts for ye, and the others. pieces of the song, with a great deal of boggling and much expressed was done, My dear fellow, my dear son, he cried out, this is more on James More. Then I think we were none so unhappy when we dwelt

_________________________________________________________

In addition to sneaking past spam filters this kind of graphic message, if sent for more nefarious purposes, can result in the reader launching a virus when one clicks on a graphic thinking they are clicking on text.

It looks like Internet Service Providers need to start building Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems that can also analyze text hidden in graphic images.

*Title courtesy of the Monthy Python ‘Eggs, Sausage and Spam’ sketch.

Little Italy

Category: Humour/Cartoon

At Luigi’s Italian Restaurant in little Italy, Luigi stares in horror as the new guy Gino accidentally brings a plate of pasta in contact with a plate of antipasta.