worst possible date

A friend of mine was recently on a bad date. This is dedicated to her.

Humourous Ways to Completely Ruin a Date (guy's perspective).**

In the Car

Obviously, when picking her up, stay in the car and honk obnoxiously. This demonstrates to her and whoever else lives with her (roommates, parents, etc) what kind of a man you are. When she gets in and says 'hey', don't even respond.

In the car play loud angry music at a painful volume. Shout above the music about your car and sound system. Drive very poorly, paying little attention to the road (and even less to her) and swearing at everyone else on the road as you cut them off. For best results, roll down the window and holler obscenities when they honk at you. Squeal your tires often.

Your destination should be cheap but a step up from fast food. This allows for more time to ramble on about yourself and your car while waiting for your meals. Park in a handicapped spot, hang a handicapped sign from the rearview if you like. The point is to show you're an ass. Park so your door is closest to the restaurant door, and just get out and walk straight in without even looking at her. If she hasn't closed her door by the time you hit your remote lock get annoyed (it's best to do this deliberately). If you don't have a remote key, get out quickly and stand waiting to lock it as she gets out. Tap impatiently with something as you wait.

Dinner

Be rude to the employees who greet you and take your order. Snicker as they leave, and be sure to mock any speech impediment or other handicap. Joke that hopefully you took their parking spot. Use this as a jumping board to get back onto the topic of your car.

Before the food arrives, sit half-sideways with one leg out into the aisle. Give people dirty looks when they trip on it. As you ramble on about yourself and your car, be sure to keep your eyes glued to her chest. Ignore her comments, and if she tries to steer the conversation away from you, casually dismiss whatever she's yapping about and leap back onto the topics dearest to your heart.

Order a meal at least 5 times as big as you can eat. Force yourself to eat half of that, and leave the rest (be sure to have picked at everything). Then ask "are you going to finish that?" whether she is still eating or not. Talk loudly and with your mouth full, and make some effort to spit food onto her and her plate. Conversation should again revolve around you and your car. If talking about your car isn't your thing, talk about your other awesome possessions. But remember, we're trying to look pathetic: insecure doesn't go far enough.

Make up as many anecdotes as you can. These should be clearly false, and should focus on your terrific capacity for drinking, and your prolific sexual exploits (it's best if you can combine the two). Provide embarrassingly nauseating detail (but don't get embarrassed yourself). Your car should be a recurring character in these stories. Other subjects may include your complete lack of sympathy for mistreated animals, or your personal thoughts on the effectiveness of medieval torture and execution practices. Again, link the subjects if you can.

When the main part of the meal is over, order a large "dessert-for-two." Offer her none and greedily hog the whole thing. Eat about a third of it, but make enough of a mess for the rest to be inedible. Ask for it all on one bill.

Obviously you are not going to pay for her meal, and if all goes according to plan, you aren't going to pay for yours either. Leave the bill on the table. If the waiter put it near to you, subtly push it towards her. With luck she'll eventually be forced to pick up the bill just to get out of there. Use this extra time to continue to expound about yourself. Mention your car frequently. Mock the food quality of the restaurant loudly and with comments like "man, those meatballs had the texture of cockroaches!" or "the beer was the only decent part of this meal. Fuck I love bud." If she demands that you at least pay for your part, say you forgot your wallet.

At the Movies

If she's still around, or if you're starting here, here's how to ruin the movie for her.

First, order massive amounts of popcorn and two drinks, to imply that you're buying for her too. Hoard it all throughout the movie and do everything possible to prevent her from getting any. Get annoyed and tell her to go buy her own if she succeeds. If you told her you forgot your wallet to make her pay for dinner, use it now to pay for your snacks. Otherwise you can ask to borrow some cash for food (if she refuses, get it anyway to show that you did have enough cash anyway).

Before you get there, research the movie online and memorize the plot. Give away the plot loudly during the movie; however, you must make it appear that she is quietly telling you these things: "So you're saying that the killer is Mary, not Mr. Perkins?" This effectively gets the whole theatre pissed off at her as well as at you.

In addition, talk loudly about things unrelated to the movie, such as your car. Especially if you see a car on the screen. Make a loud and thorough comparative analysis, concluding that they should have used your car instead.*

The Drive Home

Observe the same guidelines for driving as above. However, on the way to drop her off at home pull into some empty parking lot (or better yet a known car-sex location) as if you expect sex. This would be the only time you pay any attention to her, but it must be slimy and lascivious. Completely fail to understand that she's not interested, but you should get confused, not angry. If you apologise and try to reconcile for this (and succeed) it makes the next part much more funny (despite how unnatural it may seem to 'apologise' for anything).

When dropping her off back home, drop her at the end of her street or court, citing your gas budget. Demand gas money. Alternatively, stating that it's to "keep the mileage down" is even more effective, implying that you don't think she's worth another 3 tenths of a km on your odometer. Urge her to "hurry up while there's nobody behind us," regardless of the likelihood that another car will appear.

Another way to do it, if you're really feeling up to the challenge, would be to actually abandon her somewhere to find her own way home. Do tell her you're going, though. Then when she asks how she's supposed to get home, say "Yeah it was alright. I'll call you." then leave.

In Conclusion

The absolute key things to remember are:

• Never compliment her, unless it's subtly insulting, or outright sarcastic.
  
• Never get pulled into an actual conversation. Be sure to talk about things she doesn't know much about.
• Never hold a door for her, or do anything remotely chivalrous.
• Never make excuses for yourself. You know you're the perfect man and she's lucky to have this shot at a night of hot sex and car talk.
  
• Always be insulting, degrading, disgusting, and rude. Crush her spirit so yours seems all the greater.

Will it work in reverse?
Generally guys are so happy to be on a date in the first place and also (certainly in my case) so unobservant that for this to work in reverse, the signals would have to be far more blatant. Like throwing a drink all over him and kicking him in unhappy places, then stabbing him with a dessert fork, wrapping him in plastic, and throwing him in a dumpster. For me, this might imply that she isn't entirely enthralled by the prospect of more dates.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you discuss your car.

• Do not talk about safety features, except to mock them or describe how you plan to rip them out to save weight.
• Never mention practicality.
• Frequently talk about how you plan to mod it. Your plans for purple fluorescent lights underneath, once you get the cash, are sure to make her want you.
• Invent ridiculous drag-racing episodes with vastly superior cars, all of which you have won.
• Your car should be a '93 Taurus, or perhaps a k-car. Describe it's beauty nonetheless; try to make the contrast with how little you've complimented hers painfully obvious.
  

*I cannot be held responsible if you get lynched.
**I cannot be held responsible if you are splashed with a beverage, kicked in the nuts, stabbed, wrapped in plastic, and thrown in a dumpster.

I cannot tear my eyes away

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD

must... resist... ...close window.... ....mouse... too... heavy.... ...alt+F4.... ...ahhh thank god.

I've been overwhelmed by a veritable torrent of no response to the last post. In case you find those too difficult, here are a couple more options, also featuring Blair. You can still caption the others.

contest results, Blair contest, other fascinating things

This is gonna be a hell of a long post. This is because I have lots to mention, and it's all you'll have from me for at least another week, since this is such a busy time right now. Since I know few of you have attention spans long enough to read it all in one go, I'll spread the stuff of least general interest out to force you to at least skim it. However, do bear in mind that I wouldn't be "publishing" it here if I didn't think you'd find it at least somewhat scintillating. Also you could just read it in installments, to tide you over until next time.

First the good news: apparently Bush's grip on the US and its policy is loosening. As you know the Republicans lost control of both houses to the Democrats this week, and also Rumsfeld is stepping down. I thought I'd take this opportunity to say goodbye to him.

Dear Mr. Rumsfeld,
I see that you are stepping down. I for one am disappointed, but only because this means I won't be able to marvel anymore at how immensely evil you appear on TV. I always half expected you to pull out a Nalgene bottle full of crude, or perhaps goat's blood, and start chugging during a press conference.
Likely, you aren't actually an evil person, and I paid little attention to what you actually did while you were around, but your appearance, at least, gives me ideas for Hallowe'en costumes. That and the fact that you held a position of obscene and ungodly power over the world while looking like that.
Toodles! G.

For some reason I keep having intensely vivid and physically realistic dreams about driving very powerful cars with standard transmissions. Last night it was a bright yellow amalgamation of a Ford GT40 (the old one) and a Ferrari F40. The point was that I wasn't racing or anything, just trying to drive it normally to the racetrack in Geary from home in Fredericton. The engine was deafeningly loud and high pitched, and generated so much torque that it was almost impossible to keep the rear wheels from spinning every time I touched the pedal, no matter what gear I was in. I don't know why I've been having these dreams just recently, as opposed to all my life, but I hope it continues, and that I get retro-paid for all the car dreams I should have been having for the last 22 years.

Today this caught my interest, and had me in stitches for literally several seconds. It's a book (album insert for a band?) with French phonetic translations of English nursery rhymes. For instance the name of it: Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames (literally: Words of Hours: Pods, Oars), can be roughly pronounced "Mother Goose Rhymes." As a more full example, try saying this, the phonetic translation of Hickory Dickory Dock:

Et qui rit des curés d’Oc?
De Meuse raines, houp! de cloques.
De quelles loques ce turque coin.
Et ne d’ânes ni rennes,
Écuries des curés d’Oc.

I took the French phonetic versions and ran them through some online translators, and got some great lyrical poetry, such as the following from parts of the French phonetic translation of "Monday's Child is full of grace":

Beg for this shawl and this iron with the buttocks.

is this demarcating two clog-makers?

And this fascinating translation of "Mary had a little lamb":

myraids avoid blades,
and harm smooth fires.
Where sat and ring high.
In the trough, debts annoint town hall,
two blue blades of Iago.

Hickory Dickory Dock is also quite hilarious:

And who laughs at the priests of Oc?
From Meuse groove, houp! blisters.
Of who wrecks this Turkish corner.
And of neither donkeys nor reindeers,
Stables of the priests of Oc.

Funnily enough it's all far superior to any of the lyrics I've ever come up with for my own tunes. Also it should be abundantly clear that I took way more than a 'few seconds' to amuse myself with this. Anything (especially blogging) to avoid doing actual work.

Thanks to advice and files from Joe, I've been listening to the Now Show, a BBC radio 4 comedy show, sorta like 22 minutes. It's hilarious, including jokes like "what do you get if you cross an NHS manager with a pig? Nothing, there are some things even a pig won't do." (from a monologue mocking the National Health Service, the UK equivalent of our Healthcare system) and, from the same monologue, quoting graffiti on the wall of a men's room stall in the Department of Health "There are a thousand people who work in this building, and at this precise moment you're the only one who knows what he's doing." That absolutely kills me... I'm tempted to graffiti it in a bathroom in the teaching hospital on campus.

Anyway these guys made a mock 'synopsis' of Lord of the Rings, skipping some 'twiddly bits'. I've added a few appropriate links (most for non-Brits, some for fun). It's spoken in a highly derisive tone:
Scene: Tubby Hill. Offensive leprechaun midget gives face-like-a-slapped-arse midget a little ring that he nicked off a mentalist in a cave. Slapped-face-Elijah-Wooden takes ring to elves, all of whom look suspiciously like former members of Status Quo. More midgets, dwarves, and people with longer names than Welsh railway stations decide to take ring via longest most mental route, back to ringmaker's at hot mountain, and throw it away. Or possibly exchange it, if they can find the receipt. On the way pissed-wizard fights with camp dracula wizard, loses, then fights acid-jazz hero breathing fire, loses again and falls down a hole; Sean Bean gets shot four times before he finally stops milking it and dies; and the ring is taken off by slappy-faced big-eyed midget Frodo Baggins and his idiot friend, Middle Earth's answer to Forrest Gump. Brief irritating pause of two years, and then finally throws the ring in the hot mountain by mistake.

On a sidenote, how does one pronounce "Glyndyfrdwy"? Depending on which faction of syntax fanatics you adhere to, there are no vowels. And how do you pronounce the "frdw" part without inadvertently inserting your own vowels? In Welsh, any time you see two L's together (eg Llangollen, Llwyngwril), it's pronounced as a hacking sound, as though you were assembling a mass of phlegm at the back of your mouth, in readiness for the rest of the name to cause you to disperse it liberally onto your interlocutor. It seems to me that most Welsh names and words are created by doing an impersonation of grinding the gears of a car, then attempting to transcribe your sound effects; or perhaps by dragging an enraged, chained goblin through a knee-deep pool of boiling oil in a trench lined with shards of glass, and then writing down his blubbering curses and shrieks. Of course Glyndyfrdwy is as nothing compared to that long one, in which there are four l's in a row at one point. Note that the incredibly long one was made up just to surpass Llanfair-(etc).

On to some rather frightening global warming stuff. Today in my 707 grad class we had a quaternary geologist, who gave us an introduction to late glacial activity around the Calgary area, and ended the class with some quite shocking material related to climate change. Recent research into ice cores in Greenland and the Antarctic has shown strong evidence that very rapid climate change has occurred in the past, with sudden spikes into very cold temperatures during interglacials (warm periods) and spikes into temperatures like today in the middle of very cold periods (these spikes are superimposed on the 50-100 thousand year glacial-interglacial cycles). For instance, the latest such spike (called the Younger Dryas) occurred about 11,500 years ago, as temperatures were well on their way to recovery from the Wisconsinan glacial period (last major ice age). According to oxygen isotopes in the ice cores (it's reliable), there were dramatic temperature plunges from nice and warm (like the present), to 2/3rds of the way to a full-on glaciation in less than ten years. Possibly as little as 3. And they're not entirely sure what sets these things off. Frankly this makes the frenzy about 6 degrees and a metre rise in sea levels over the next 90 years rather pointless. There is no way that current infrastructure could handle this sort of climate shift. It's thought that these shifts are caused by massive changes to the thermohaline cirulation in the oceans (currents), which distribute warmth around the world. Some of the "alarmist camp" (as the prof referred to them) have claimed that this could be caused by the destabilisation of the environment, say, by the influx of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere per year, though this hasn't been shown.

In case you were wondering, the movie The Day After Tomorrow was partially based on the earlier stages of this work, although the two week change is just a touch faster than the predicted rate. Oh, and a normal transition from interglacial to glacial takes many tens of thousands of years, and (ignoring anthropogenic influences) isn't projected to start naturally for another 8 to 20 thousand years.

Anyway I could ramble on and on about climate change. I'll just say this: I don't believe there's enough data to form strong opinions one way or another, plus there are more worrying things around, which we can actually help to fix. The main one is pollution; of air, rivers, lakes, and groundwater. This we can change, and the conservatives' "clean air" plan actually addresses this instead of placing so much emphasis on climate change. Therefore I support it in principle, but it's useless, because it's (a) not aggressive enough and (b) won't pass anyway.

Okay that's enough soapboxing for today. It's time for Contest Results!

Joe wins; any comparison of Harper to a freeloading hitchhiker is excellent. But I gotta apologize to Jenn and Shannon, as it occured to me that since Joe and I have a similar sense of humour I'm inclined to find his suggestions more amusing. But you have to admit he is very witty. I would have suggested "Hey Stevie-boy, I heard you guys have some oil! So where can we park our tanker trucks?" "Parking lot of the Fort McMurray Walmart, but first just dump your nuclear waste in Ontario somewhere."

And now the New Contest!!! This time, and next time, it's the antics of British PM Tony Blair. Three shots to mock, including the one up top that got your attention.Mock away. Just so you know, parallels have been drawn between Blair and our own Harper, as the puppets of a certain Texan and his (collapsing it seems) regime. Also "Number Ten" is 10 Downing Street, residence of Brit PM. Just like 24 Sussex Drive here.

That's all folks.

new contest and headlines.

It's been longer than usual. To make up for it this is an interesting one. First headlines.

So apparently even the sand people are getting desperate for cash these days.

Here's the new contest. Caption away.

Not too much else to say, so I'll summarize the normal drivel that everyone loves. I have a lot of work to do, and have a slight cold. The weather here is cold and snowy. Now I am going in to the uni to send off some more samples to be made into probe sections. I am truly very excited about the ones I've already got back, there are fantastic microstructures and some strange minerals I haven't been able to identify yet.