where else?

i've just learned that in addition to their newly acquired sea lion exhibit, that west edmonton mall plans to add an indoor zoo to their roster of the flabby, the oversized, the incredibly poor taste attractions.

have they learned anything? nothing from Howard and his poor deceased dolphin friends? i mean, sure, we can probably convince ourselves that at some level, perhaps dolphins enjoy performing for our whims, enjoy having pennies pitched into their tank, enjoy watching the submarines and drowned drunkards float by in the lagoon. but sea lions? a zoo? what's next? monkey personal shoppers? the smell alone will be enough to drive shoppers to phase 8 or whatever phase they're at now.

so before they install the grand funk of indoor animal cruelty, perhaps they could consider the countless other attractions which could be added to the mall which wouldn't involve imprisoning our jungle friends...

1) wax museum
2) a decent mini-putt course, with working windmills. and chomping monkey heads!
3) turn the entire ghost-town section into a TRON-inspired laser-tag
4) a... ahem... gentlemen's club
5) human daredevils
6) lego town. or duplo town. whatever.
7) put some money into your amusement park, already!
8) clean up the numerous and skanky food courts.
9) rehab centre for all the burnouts who spend the day munching at the mall. see (8).
10)hunting ground for the most dangerous game... man.
11) one word: rollerball.
12) skate park
13) mechanical bull riding, 24-7.
14) freak show
15) world's largest contained indoor tire fire
16) robot wars

and the list goes on. the point is, that if you want to draw people to your mall, you should probably consider something NEW, and something that won't draw protest. or, if you must have animals, why not have the world's largest indoor ant farm? perhaps we could purchase some genetically modified ants who could crawl through habitrail tunnels, serving their queen for our amusement.

ants whose genetically modified exoskeletons would be impermeable to pennies tossed by yahoos whose definition of wit is, well.. tossing pennies at things.

u/v

when you're on a holiday...

well, it's official: the new "Holiday Spiced Pepsi" makes an excellent keyboard cleaner! i discovered this after Smudge knocked over J's glass of said beverage all over the computer. much panic ensued, but my keyboard has never been cleaner, or shinier. seriously, i think this is the stuff that the Dudes At Dell use in the factory.

no ill effects so far, in any case: none of the more popular Wheel Of Fortune letters are sticking, but the true test will be when we get into the more exotic letters that are hardly ever used.

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back.

nope, everything's coming up holiday spiced pepsi!

genius!

i've been looking for a blog i was reading with no success. it was hilarious. the last entry was a tragically true tale of a friend's b/f accidentally killing a pet hedgehog while in a drug-induced haze, and then the hedgehog's owner having to cremate the poor sucker on a hibachi or something. possibly while also in a drug-induced haze. seriously. but then i got distracted when she linked to the peterpan guy's page and i accidentally closed the window. so since then, i 've been wandering through pages of people's poetry, people's elegies to relationships, political manifestoes, cool skins, annoying trance music, and statements of purpose.

i have no statement of purpose.

unless, of course, you want to contact Pepsi and tell them how wicked their product is at cleaning keyboards. they could probably use the confidence boost, judging by the lack of self-esteem demonstrated on pepsi.com.

i went to the website to do just that, and was treated to a conversation with Lisa, the Pepsi World help center virtual representative. basically, you just type in your questions, and she answers them. obviously, Pepsi isn't just for cleaning your keyboards anymore: it's on the cutting edge of AI technologies. here's an excerpt of our interview:

u/v: how is it that your product is so awesome at cleaning my keyboard?

lisa: it is pretty neat, all right.

u/v: no, seriously, who came up with the idea?

lisa: oh yes... way!

u/v: what the hell are you talking about?

lisa: Oh, I'm sorry if my response did not meet your needs. Please narrow the subject down by rephrasing your question so that I can be of better help this time.

u/v: no problem, lisa... so what are you doing later?

lisa: I'm sorry, my schedule is booked 24/7. Besides, I'm a computer program, silly.

u/v: pretty darn clever, you little minx. give me free pepsi!

lisa: oh. ok.

u/v: not too bright, eh?

lisa: My name is Lisa and I'm a computer program designed to simulate a human customer service representative. People ask me tons of questions and I do my best to answer them. Oh, and the only place you will ever see me is on this site because I just love this place!

u/v: oh. ok.


and so you see, that's pretty much what our interview was like. i guess i'm not much of an investigative journalist. maybe next post i should do a hard-hitting story on askjeeves.com. dish the dirt and all that.

u/v

we salute you, ABC

"mommy, our new house smells like back bacon!"

"i can't get into my room, it's full of labatt 50 bottles. and they're STUBBIES!"

these might have been the wails of the Imbriani family, were it not for the quick thinking of the cast and crew of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Yes, it seems that they had ordered some sort of prefab house from a CANADIAN company, and the CANADIAN contractor was not aware that the CANADIAN (read:inferior) building codes were not the same as the american building codes. the preproduction scene where the crew and producers themselves reviewed said building codes with the contractor must have been cut for time. in the words of Sears-brand hottie Ty Pennington "the Canadian has said Au Revoir"-- after the contractor delivered his stuff as promised and left. fortunately this was an opportunity for great drama, as Ty and the gang called in a no-nonsense crew of chest-thumping American contractors, who made no bones about mentioning every few minutes how terrible the CANADIAN work was. in fact, it seems like anytime ANYTHING went wrong it was the CANADIAN'S FAULT. don't worry, it all turned out in the end for the family, and the house looked great, and the designers all cried, as usual, and everyone seems to feel pretty satisfied with themselves. however, i couldn't help but notice that a couple of weeks ago, when there was an entire WORK CREW that just didn't SHOW UP for work, no matter that the poor family of conjoined twins and quadruple amputees wouldn't have their walk-in sauna, no one seemed to mention that they were americans, or greeks, or mexicans, or italians, or whatever. actually, no one even referred to them as "those jerks who didn't show up".

so, congratulations, ABC, for taking your feel-good hit and using it to take oh-so-clever jibes at your neighbors to the north. especially when they were trying to help out. i bet old walt would be proud.

incidentally, if you want to contact abc and talk about canada, or ty's abs, or anything else that strikes your fancy, you can do so at: netaudr@abc.com .

u/v