Month: November 2008

Be nice to the driver of this car. For starter, s/he’s had a bad week…

Click the photo to see it at full size. Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

…and according to the “More Than Three” rule, is mentally unbalanced:

Comic courtesy of Toothpaste for Dinner.

Luckily, it’s nothing that a little WD-40 can’t fix:

I saw this out in Mississauga yesterday:

I had no idea that Erich von Däniken was still alive.

von Däniken is the author of Chariots of the Gods? and other books that promoted his theory that ancient civilizations had contact with alien races and worshipped them as gods. The alien visitors in turn gave the ancient humans technologies that allowed them to build wonders that would’ve been beyond their abilities – things like Stonehenge and the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids. In his books, he suggests the figures depicted in some ancient art pieces were actually astronauts in spacesuits or flying spacecraft, and that stories about beings who descended from the heavens and flew through the air should be interpreted literally: as primitive descriptions of visitors from other worlds.

Most scientists view von Däniken as a crackpot and his theories as bunk. Even as thirteen-year-old reading his books, I thought of his stuff as entertaining pseudo-science and raw material for my Dungeons and Dragons games.

von Däniken appears to be alive, well and still selling his “aliens” theories, according to Science Blogs, which has an article covering a lecture he gave on October 17th. According to Florian Freistetter, who attended the lecture, there were somewhere between 600 and 700 people in attendance, and they all seemed to be von Däniken true-believers. Freistetter took notes at the lecture, and it would seem that von Däniken is still as big a crackpot (if not bigger) as ever. If you’re of a scientific bent but like hearing about wacky pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, you’ll find the article quite amusing.

While in L.A., I attended a cocktail party on the roof of The Standard hotel, which has the item shown below on display in its entrance:

Before I became an accordion guy, I was a synth guy, and prior to that, I learned how to play keyboards (and bass pedals) on the organ. I remember seeing the organ pictured above – a Thomas 2001 “Space Organ” – at the Canadian National Exhibition in the late seventies and experiencing my first pangs of gadget lust. By today’s standards, I’m sure this instrument sounds cheesy and retro, but when I first heard it being played, it sounded like an instrument from the future.

I only wish it had been plugged in so I could take it for a spin. I’m pretty sure I could do a mean bossa nova version of KMFDM’s Stray Bullet on this baby!

Here are more photos:

Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

If you’re in Canada and you’re looking to buy a digital camera in the near future, you’re in luck. According to the website SmartCanucks.ca, Shoppers Drug Mart is having a big sale on cameras starting near the end of the month.

The table below shows the cameras that will be on sale, when it’ll be on sale and what the original and sale prices are. To make your research a little bit easier, I linked each camera model to a corresponding Google search.

Do me one last favour for my birthday and spread this photo far and wide, will you please?

Photo courtesy of seinkonnen.
Click the photo to see the original.