nonamedufus

Mrs Dufus and I were watching our daily post-dinner fare on the big screen last night when after being bombarded by ads for Robillard Hearing Aids (Hi Julia! - it's a local thing), Chip Reverse Mortgages and Acorn Stair Lifts I turned and remarked "you know, I think only old people watch TV these days". It seems all the ads are aimed at people of my advanced age, and older. Well, except for the local radio ads that pump out formats of millennium musical miss-mash. God I'm old. And then I reflect on just where I'm at. Let's see, chemo, renal diet, daily weight and blood pressure readings, taking my blood sugar three time a day for my diabetes. hearing aids, endless pills in the morning and at night, etc., etc, etc. So maybe those ads are targeted at me. Not Mrs D 'cause she's not as old as I am - she keeps reminding me. It's gotten to the point I've seen those Stair Lift ads so often I can almost recite them from memory. In fact I like

Recently we went out for dinner with some good friends that we hadn't seen in a while. We had a great dinner and got caught up on all kinds of things. After, we went for a short stroll in an effort to walk off the satiating effects of the meal. We chatted, we strolled and we did a little window shopping. And then we came across these... Now these pictures were taken at 9 o'clock at night on a camera-phone so if you can't make them out let me help you. They're a man's suit and a women's outfit in a store window. Nothing odd about that, right? Look a little closer. They're made from pictures of food. And to top it off they're plasticized. * What compounded the oddness of the situation was that these outfits were in the window of the St Vincent de Paul Society Thrift Shop. Imagine! * Now some people collect stamps or coins. Me I collect CDs. But imagine if someone collected clothes. Maybe they've got Liberace's sequined suites. Or they might ha

It's Roast Week over at the web mother house of humour Humor Bloggers Dot Com . That's not a typo. I'm Canadian, they're not. I say humour, they say humor. I say poh-tay-toe, they say I talk funny. Vive la difference. Any hoo, the objects of our objection are HBDC`s onerous owner, originator and overlord Chelle B and her ass-kissing able administrative assistant Da Old Man . Hey, remember this is a roast! ;) By way of background, our two targets are both going though some challenging medical dilemmas. Chelle's of two minds, you might say, and Da Old Man's been spiralling in an endless vortex of medical maelstroms, hospitalized since early summer. I've decided to roast each of my blogging buds separately. Today, Chelle is the object of my afflictions and tomorrow DOM. Or to put it more succinctly: today the schizoid, tomorrow the whorled. Chelle splits her mind and her time between two blogs. Not only does she run the web's wackiest home for humour hipst

I know that means "How are you?" in English, or in recent vernacular " Wassup ?" But a literal translation might be more along the lines of "Are you going to comment?" Why do I raise this? Well, follow along. Bloggers , in particular humour bloggers , are a unique bunch. They love to let their imaginations run wild. And they love to write, to share their innermost thoughts in a periodic blog post. But they're immensely insecure. They crave feedback! It's like a drug and bloggers can't create until they're satiated in piles of prop-up praise. Writing a blog is a blast. What used to be putting pen to paper is now putting finger to keypad but the creative force remains the same and it gives a writer a chance to express him/herself to an interested audience. Not that the majority will make any money from this. A comment here and there, though, is viewed as a reward of riches (oh, pull-eeze!). Nevertheless, a comment or two will help soothe

What do the leaders of Canada, the United States and Iran, a big gun and doughnuts have in common? Stay tuned...all shall be revealed. The United Nations in New York this week was the focus of considerable media attention. A guy who's name hardly anyone can pronounce, and couldn't care less if they do, who last year at the same forum denied the existence of the Holocaust was set to speak again. President Obama, fresh from fishing for compliments via a media saturation blitz, was set to make his maiden UN address. And Canada's PM skipped the whole affair in favour of a coffee and a doughnut, prompting many Canadian news outlets running the story to slug it "Doughnuts (okay, okay "donuts" for you Yanks) over Diplomacy". Obama, to his credit, despite waning public support at home demonstrated he still has the "it" factor internationally. As the Toronto Star editorialized "...Obama cut a bold figure on the world stage yesterday, delivering a

"I've still got it" What is it with Hollywood's pre-occupation with sequels? It's not enough to produce one movie? You can't come up with a fresh idea for a new movie? You gotta go back to the well two... three... even four times? ^ In 1981, Harrison Ford starred in a hugely successful movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark . It was so successful George Lucas and Steven Spielberg decided to do a sequel in 1984 and Harrison Ford starred in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom . It was so successful... ...yeah, you got it - H.F. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. ^ Not content with... a) a trilogy of movies b) a trilogy of mega-profits c) with their last movie having the word "last" in the title, or d) all of the above ^ ...Messrs Ford, Lucas and Spielberg came out with a fourth in the franchise, last year's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . ^ At 65, Ford was practically using a walker for the latest installment. Now

I have a confession to make. I'm having an affair. For the past 8 years or so Big Red and I have been meeting every week to cut loose. The contours of her sleek and smooth oriental body drive me wild. And her pert little seat, covered in black leather, really puts me over the edge. She's a little rock and roller. And how she loves to move! It began as a summer romance. In our first encounter we made mad love in the tall grasses. And I really shouldn't say this but each time we meet she really makes me sweat. She makes me work hard. And when she revs up she really gets me going. Throughout the years she's never steered me wrong. Our relationship has run smoothly for the most part, with some minor bumps here and there. But I've got to tell you in terms of the complete package, she's a well oiled machine. She never chokes, indeed when she opens up it's at full throttle. And a sense of humour? She's a real cut up. But all is not as it should be between us. L

Man, Obama just can't get a break! It was an interesting week for news. Canada's Prime Minister visited the President in Washington. And "civility" made headlines, thanks largely to Serena Williams, Joe Wilson and Kanye West not knowing what it was. Finally, with the release of remastered CD box sets and video games, boomers were getting their Beatle freak on.

Earlier this week President Obama and Prime Minister Harper put their own political controversies behind them and met for just under an hour in the Oval Office. In terms of positive ink and images, the meeting was expected to benefit the Prime Minister far more than the President. > Fresh from his less than successful valedictorian address and his run in with "Jackass" Joe Wilson, Obama was lucky if Harper's visit rated anywhere above negative numbers on the Washington Richter scale. In other words it probably didn't provide Obama with a needed diversion from the previous week's full court press from the media and Republicans. > On the other hand, on the brink of a snap election, the timing of the visit for Harper couldn't have been better. "Mr Harper Goes To Washington" to meet with his good buddy Barack would have been quite the image for the electorate to have in their minds as they trudged to the polls trying to decide who among Canada'

There's a song that goes... Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel, as the images unwind, like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind! I thought of this song as I started to pull this post together, because it never really begins or ends, and it spins a bunch of things at you that have been collecting dust in my mind, my bookmarks and my image library. First up was this pic...it's what a masochist might make himself for lunch... Speaking of sandwiches, did you ever wonder if when 2 turkey sandwiches mate would their offspring be inbread? Oh, you never stopped to think that? Well, I did. And while we're on about turkeys, know why the musical group invited the turkey to be their drummer? 'Cause he had his own drumsticks! (rimshot). With all the problems in the auto industry did you ever stop to think what might happen if IKEA and Volvo merged? Here's one for you. Why the heck do the

The other day I came across something called the Chevy Nova Awards. They're called that in honor of the General Motors fiasco in trying to market this car in Central and South America. "No va" means, of course, in Spanish, "it doesn't go". The following are the top three Chevy Nova nominees: 1) The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?" 2) Coors put its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer From Diarrhea." Yeah I can relate to that! 3) Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux." Hmmm... If you wanna see the rest, hit up this site . Speaking of awards, last week, right out of the blue, I received an Awesome Blogger Friend award from a fell

Well, that was the last long weekend of the summer of 09. For some of us, this past long weekend was the only summer we've had. And, this weekend, in an ongoing effort to get a life, while proving to my dear wife I love her and enjoy her company more than anything in this world (including this laptop computer), I took her for a hot air balloon ride Saturday for her birthday. Camera (and Blackberry) in hand, off we went! Our ride had been scheduled the week previously but had been rained out. Turns out not only did we have great weather this time around but our ride coincided with the annual Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival and we'd be taking off with 80 other balloons! We met at the pick up spot at 5:45am. We got there a little early. Old habits die hard. With time to kill, I pulled out the Blackberry and at 5:11 I tweeted: going got air ballooning Awaiting pickup Should be cool Who knew you had to spell. At 5:13 I tweeted: hot hot hot air ballooning My wife and I, another c

Creating a blog post is a little like producing a child. It starts with the act of creation. Having debated whether to post or not, one gets down to tentatively approaching the task at hand. A thought is massaged into an idea and gently rubbed and caressed into an outline. Once paper and pen have repeatedly touched, or keystrokes have thrust themselves across the computer screen, the seed of an idea is quickly lodged upon the page where it often gestates until the little blog post is born. Once it achieves life it is carefully nurtured and fed, corrected from time to time as it grows and takes shape. It is raised from a tiny idea until it blossoms into a full post all neat and tidy and fully-formed. It is now ready to head out into the real world not unlike the first day of school. Here it will join other little blog posts in the school of the world-wide web. And we must let it go to stand on its own, to survive and to meet and make new and interesting friends, no matter how hard it i

This week's featured editorial cartoons are all by Canadian cartoonists and focus on two political issues near and dear to Canadians' hearts: Senate appointments and election speculation. Funny, the PM, who once said he'd reform the Senate, has fallen right into line with his pork-barrelling predecessors. And, on the election speculation front having been Opposition leader for 8 months Michael Ignatieff has finally decided, unlike his predecessor Stephane "not a leader" Dion to pull Liberal support for the Conservative minority government, and perhaps force an election about a year since the last one. There's three things Canadians love to complain about, and in the following order: 1) Toronto (don't ask why, we just do) 2) the weather (duh) 3) how often we go to the polls