
This is why pets turn on their owners…
The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
This is why pets turn on their owners…
The Royal Canadian Air Farce, one of Canada's longest-running comedy troupes, will be grounded after next season, CBC announced on Tuesday.
The venerable weekly sketch comedy TV show, known for its topical mix of political and social satire, will produce nine regular episodes in the fall before ending with its traditional New Year's Eve gala special. The cast of CBC-TV's Royal Canadian Air Farce will perform the season finale on Friday.
“It's just time,” original cast member and producer Don Ferguson told CBC News on Tuesday afternoon. “We've done pretty much everything we wanted to do. The ratings are still good. I want to be in charge of my own exit.”
Ferguson also said he didn't consider what day had been chosen for the announcement. “I didn't even realize it was April 1 that we were doing this, that it was going to come outIt's not a joke, but it's a great date for us to announce it. April Fool's Day, why not?”
The secret to the show's long run, he added, was keeping the audience the main priority. “We've only ever worried about [each] week's show and how the audience is going to respond to it,” Ferguson said.
“If we can make real, living, breathing Canadians laugh about what's going on in Canada and the world and life in general, it's a great gig.”
Radio beginnings
Originating with a Montreal comedy troupe in 1970, Air Farce debuted on CBC Radio in December 1973, eventually producing more than 600 broadcasts over 24 years. The show was introduced to CBC-TV audiences in 1980, after which came a 10-episode series and several once-a-year TV specials over the next few years.
After the 1992 New Year's Eve special proved popular with viewers, Air Farce became a mainstay of CBC-TV beginning in October 1993. After running on both CBC Radio and CBC-TV, the show moved exclusively to television in 1997. Last year, to celebrate its 300th episode, the producers, cast and crew staged an hour-long, live-to-air show.
They subsequently decided that, beginning this season, all shows would continue with the live format. In addition to original members Ferguson, Roger Abbott and Luba Goy, the current cast features Penelope Corrin, Jessica Holmes, Craig Lauzon and Alan Park.
Air Farce's current season finale airs Friday.
“We remain in discussions with [producers Abbott and Ferguson] about upcoming projects,” said CBC spokesman Jeff Keay.
I've finally taken the time to get pictures and stuff off my camera and have a little fun with them. This is part of what was on my memory card:
Here's another bit:
This is what I have to deal with when I get to bed after being on the laptop for longer than Katy deems suitable.
Man hires stripper for dads funeral
A Taiwanese man hired an erotic dancer to perform at his 103-year-old fathers funeral. The stripper danced in front of Cai Jinlais coffin for more than ten minutes at the funeral in Taizhong town. Son, Cai Ruigong, paid her more than £80 to dance in memory of his late father.
Cai Ruigong says he promised his father a stripper for his funeral if he lived beyond the age of 100. Cai Jinlai passed away at the age of 103 after a three mile walk into town to vote. He was the oldest person in his village and had more than 100 descendants. His son said his father was famous locally for his interest in strip clubs: He would travel around the island with his friends to see these shows, he added.
Email received today sent to everybody at the EBI:
Reception wrote:
> If you have borrowed the Guillotine please return it to the post
> room. It is needed urgently.
>
> Thank you – P
Who will be executed?
Bold the ones you have, and pass it on!
* Adjusting the dwell angle on the distributor of your car's engine
* Adjusting the rabbit ears on your TV set
* Adjusting a television's horizontal and vertical holds
* Adjusting the tracking on a VCR
* Aiming C-band satellite dish
* Assembly Language Programming
* Advising someone to use WordPerfect for DOS
* Balancing the tonearm on a turntable
* Blowing the dust out of a Nintendo cartridge
* Booting off a floppy disk
* Bust apart a long computer printout
* Changing vacuum tubes
* Changing the ball or ribbon on your Selectric Typewriter
* Changing the C120 Film Cartridge in your Instamatic camera
* Changing the gas mixture on your cars carburetor
* Changing tracks on an eight-track tape
* Chipping flint or obsidian tools
* Churn butter
* Cleaning head of a VCR
* Crew a muzzle loading cannon
* Cranking a telephone
* Darning a sock
* Debugging hexadecimal dumps
* Defacing a Website
* Defrosting the Icebox
* Degaussing a CRT monitor
* Dialing a rotary phone
* Extracting square roots
* Formatting a floppy
* FORTRAN programming – though the logic is still good
* Getting off the couch to change channels on your TV set
* Getting TSRs and CD device drivers to load into DOS
* Harness a team of oxen
* Hand crank a car to start it
* Having Cash
* Hexadecimal arithmetic in your head
* Hunting a woolly mammoth
* Interpolating logarithms
* Lighting a carbide miner's lamp
* Lining up paper on a dot matrix or line printer
* Loading film into a 35 mm camera
* data from a cassette tape
* Long division
* Look for a job in the classifieds
* Looking up a business on the yellow pages
* Local Grocery Store
* Low Format a Harddrive
* Making a deer fat poultice
* 4″ floppy double-sided
* Making change in shillings and pence
* Memory Management
* Mounting a Computer Tape by hand
* Morse-coding messages
* Mailing in the order form of a catalog
* Navigate by the stars
* Navigating using a compass
* Navigate using a sextant
* Open and Administrate a Blog
* Paying for something with a check
* Putting a needle on a vinyl record
* Parking a hardisk
* Ride a penny-farthing bicycle
* Replacing Shoe Sole and Heels
* Resolving IRQ conflicts on a mother board
* Reading a paper map
* Remembering telephone numbers
* Repairing small appliances
* Rewind VCR tapes
* Respooling a chewed-up VCR tape or audio cassette
* Running a mimeograph machine
* Ripping the little holes off the sides of the computer paper
* Sending a letter
* Setting the timer on a VCR
* Setting type for printing
* Shave with a straight razor
* Shorthand
* Slaughtering Small Mammals and Birds
* Stacking a quarter on an arcade game to indicate you have next
* Tape to Tape Video Editing
* Testing radio and TV tubes
* Threading a needle
* Trim the wick on an oil lamp
* Typesetting
* Typing and sending a telex
* Using an adding machine
* Using a Typewriter
* Using a card catalog
* Using a 16 mm film projector
* Using a fountain pen
* Using a slide rule
* Using a typewriter
* Using a beeper or pager
* Using an abacus
* Using carbon paper to make copies
* Using correction fluid
* Using a fax machine
* Using a flash bulb
* Using a flash cube
* Using a microfiche
* Using a pay telephone
* Using a pay toilet
* Using a Timing Light
* Using a Log Table
* Watching a slide show with a slide projector
* Winding a watch or clock
* Winding up loose cassette tape with a pencil eraser before putting the cassette in the deck
* Writing using a dip pen
Sadly, the chocolate keyboard only exists as a concept piece, but I want one :)
Blame elfs for this one. Create a faux “first album.” The rules are simple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
This is my entry:
Benford's Law: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available. (Gregory Benford)
Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. (Arthur C Clarke)
Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. (Scott Adams)
Ellison's Law: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. (Harlan Ellison)
Fisher's Fundamental Theorem: The more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change. (R A Fisher)
Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. (Mike Godwin)
Hanlon's Law: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. (?Robert Heinlein)
Heisenbug Uncertainty Principle: Most production software bugs are soft: they go away when you look at them. (Jim Gray)
Lister's Law: People under time pressure don't think faster. (Timothy Lister)
Murphy's Law: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it. (Edward A Murphy)
Occam's Razor: The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. (William of Occam)
Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. (C Northcote Parkinson)
Pesticide Paradox: Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual. (Bruce Beizer)
Spector's Law: The time it takes your favorite application to complete a given task doubles with each new revision. (Lincoln Spector)