A "New Site"

Tags: Web Design | Websites | CSS | XHTML | Wordpress

A few months ago (December) a webhost was obtained. A URL was purchased. New look. New logo. Same name. Now at www.lazysupper.com.

Kinder Morgan Logo Mystery Solved

Tags: Terasen | Oil and Gas | Gas | Kinder Morgan | Canada

Well it seems my suspicions have been confirmed. While I had speculated that the wonderful Kinder Morgan logo had been designed by one of the company's namesake's offspring, I was actually just slightly off the mark.Just a few minutes I overheard some coworkers discuss the lightening bolt and mention who was responsible for the design. I couldn't help but laugh when I heard that it was in fact Rich Kinder's wife. Oh that's rich.

Superbowl Horror Story

Tags: Steelers | NFL | Football | Superbowl | Seahawks

Finally! After years of saying "next year", last year I was finally right! Because last year's "next year" was this year, and this year they lived up to last year's "next year"! Although I'd loved to see them do it next year as well! Who wouldn't?

Okay, enough exclamation marks. But seriously, who wouldn't? An average of 45.85 million American homes tuned in to watch the Steelers win their fifth Superbowl title—the second highest total in TV history, second only to the final episode of MASH, which was the center of attention in 50.15 million US homes in 1983.

Speaking of television, I watched the game on a nice big Panasonic at friends' house. Admittedly, the first half of the game was somewhat lacklustre overall. However, as soon as they upheld the ruling of Big Ben's rushing touchdown, that beautiful TV went snowy and the surround sound blasted out that fuzzy "chrrrrrr" sound that's saying "you have no cable".

Panic struck the hearts of Steelers and Seahawks fans alike. We had cold beer in the fridge, hot & teriyaki wings cooking in the oven, spin dip, 4 layer dip, and every other dip, chip, and things to sip. It was all there for us to enjoy—and then the cable crashed. A quick phone call to Shaw Cable determined it was due to the recent wind storms along the coast. It looked as though we were going to have to abandon our well-stocked fiesta and find a bar with a connection.

Then an angel appeared from across the street. She came in the form of a middle-aged suburban mom with satellite! She heard our tale of woe and invited the whole lot of us. We were truly blessed! However, just as the third quarter was getting to start, our cable came back on and we were saved from having to make the complicated pilgrimage across the street. We only ended up missing The Rolling Stones half-time show. We were doubly blessed!

We saw Charlie Parker make Superbowl history. We saw Ben Roethlisberger do the same. We saw the return of the Amazing Gadget! We saw Hines Ward become MVP! We saw Jerome Bettis and Bill Cowher finally get their due.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Steel Rock City!

Tags: Steelers | NFL | Football | Superbowl | Seahawks

Two hours until kick off. Spinach dip is made, beer is in the fridge, it's almost time to head out. In a little over seven hours from now, Ben Roethlisberger will become the youngest quarterback to ever win a Superbowl. Jerome Bettis will get the icing on the cake of his Hall-of-Fame-to-be career. The New Steel Curtain is in the house.

But why are the Rolling Stones playing at half-time? It's in Detroit. Why isn't KISS performing??

Jihad Journalism & Fatwah Funnies

Tags: Islam | Muslim | Comics | Religion | Denmark

Well, it looks like it's finally official—the world has lost its sense of humour. It was bound to happen. It's been on a steady decline since 1968 when thin-skinned humourless sticks-in-the-mud set sites on The Censored Eleven (referring to the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons that were banned due to their racial insensitivity).

Although, the 60s were a socially turbulent time in the US (where the cartoons were banned), and perhaps they needed to be banned for a short while to make a point. To move racial equality forward. So they took the dimwitted black hunter who was always being foiled by Bugs Bunny, coloured him white, and called him Elmer Fudd. Such a move immediately brings forth the argument from many that "it's okay to have a dumb white hunter, but it's not okay to have a dumb black hunter." Well... so what? In those days there weren't too many white guys who feared being randomly lynched, or even worse—denied entrance to the best restaurants in town.

Fastforward almost 40 years to 2006. The Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper publishes a dozen editorial comics poking fun at Muhammad. Within minutes, millions of muslims are mad and a jihad against their journalists is underway. The ink wasn't even dry and the paper was receiving threats to bomb its offices and kill the cartoonists. It sounds a little different than protests and sit-ins, asking for equal opportunities and the option to sit at the front of the bus. And these threats aren't coming from Muslims who are oppressed by the society in which they live. These fanatical fundamentalist freaks are far-off foreigners with their own flag!

There is even a local nutbar here in Vancouver who's getting in on the action. Younus Kathrada, imam for the Dar Al-Madinah Islamic Society, is demanding all Canadian Muslims to boycott all things Danish. Because the newspaper happens to be Danish, the entire nation and all of its industries are at fault? Wow! This guy plays hardball! Goddamn kneejerk fanaticism.

What Muslim fundamentalists have already done is impose their religion's laws upon their fellow citizens. And now they aim to impose their nation's laws upon other nations. Across the globe—Sharia law applies. Sharia law in Canada? Not a chance!

Oh, but wait. It's practiced in Ontario. The Ontario Arbitration Act provides voluntary faith-based arbitration, which allows Muslims, Jews and members of other faiths to use the guiding principles of their religion in settling private disputes such as divorce, custody issues and inheritances outside the courts.

Personally, I don't see how the overtly sexist Sharia law jibes with Canada's equality-driven ethos, but hey, it's voluntary and it's a woman's choice in this country. If a woman wants to give her husband the right to own her, well that's her business. I guess.

But back to the funnies! This is even bigger than the James Frey controversy I yapped about a few weeks ago. Seriously—the world needs to lighten the hell up. It's just a BOOK! These are just CARTOONS! And religion has been the target of satire since satire began. Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, Jah... they've all graced the pages of the funnies—or worse. In 1987 Andres Serrano dropped a crucifix in a glass of urine, took a picture, entitled it "Piss Christ", and called it art. And he was funded by the taxpayers (via the NEA)! Sure, he pissed off (ignore pun) a bunch Christians and seniors, but he still didn't have to worry about the clearly irate Jesse Helms putting a fatwah on his head. And

Yet overly religious people can't laugh. They lack a sense of humour. They'll cringe at the word "cunt" or cross themselves upon hearing "fuck". They'll blow up a building because of a drawing. They'll send thousands of soldiers thousands of miles to make the savages subscribe. They'll fly jets into skyscrapers. Cut off a man's hand for stealing a loaf of bread. Burn a woman at the stake because she's a midwife. They are very clearly the people who should not be in power, but unfortunately are those who often attain it. And keep it. And abuse it.

Some people need religion. Some people don't. That's fair. And anyway, the world's major religions are all based on the same basic tenet—"be nice". But while everyone may not need religion, everyone needs laughter. The world needs it more than it needs religion. And it needs it now more than ever before. When's the last time a good-humoured leader went off to war? When's the last time a comedian strapped on a bomb and blew up a market?

If the angry people in question had a better sense of humour, I nor millions of others would never have even heard about these comics let alone seen them. But they couldn't laugh. Nope. No way. Thanks to their ruffled feathers and oversensitivity these comics (click image for enlargement) are plastered across the internet and have travelled around the globe a million times. They must feel like their prophet has been shattered into a Million Little Pieces. And they've mostly got their leaders to blame.

State of the Blah Blah Blah...

Tags: Politics | State of the Union | Bush | America

George Bush captivated millions of mindless Americans for 51 minutes last night with his State of the Union Address. I can't help but wonder if it was he or his advisors who simply picked up a copy of last year's speech, extracted the chief platitudes, and said "Hey, that'll do."

Bush started off acknowledging the passing of Coretta Scott King. Oh that Georgie, he's always been quite the civil rights supporter. Sure, she attended his first inauguration, but was a vocal opponent of his policies and actions after that. Maybe she went to the inauguration for the same reason most people go—the free wine and jumbo shrimp cocktails.

He then continued to acknowledge some very important issues. Some very fresh ideas indeed. I offer a condensed version for those who missed it on TV and don't want to read the entire thing at the Whitehouse.

"Blah blah blah... September the 11th, 2001" [applause]
"...weapons of mass destruction" [applause]
"...the fight against terror" [applause]
"...reaction and opposition [of] radical Islam" [applause]
"...terrorists like bin Laden" [applause]
"...attacks against America" [applause]
"...we love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it" [applause]
"...our enemy is brutal" [applause]
"...Iran...is isolating and repressing its people" [applause]
"...the attacks of September the 11th" [applause]
"...raise standards of living and generate new jobs" [applause]
"...make the tax cuts permanent" [applause]
"May God bless America." [applause]

Wow. It's like nothing I've ever blah blah blah. However, there was one thing Bush said that I found a wee bit interesting—"America is addicted to oil." First of all, no shit. Second of all, wouldn't that make him America's Pablo Escobar?

Paul Martin Can't Quit!

Tags: Politics | Liberals | Canada | Canadian Politics

Call them the Three Non-Stooges. Or the Three Wisemen. Or Snap, Crackle, and Pop! It doesn't matter, just don't call any of them Leader.

Yesterday political Rat Packer Brian Tobin announced that he would not be putting his name in the hat for the Liberal Leadership. He joins fellow expected-to-but-not-gonna-run Liberals Frank Mckenna and former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley, who have both announced they'd prefer not to captain Canada's political Titanic.

McKenna, Canada's outgoing ambassador to the United States, recently offered a wonderful resignation letter to Ottawa's new top dog Stephen Harper. While he hasn't written a comparably classy letter, upon failing to maintain parliament, former PM Paul Martin stated that he would soon resign his post as Liberal leader. However, how can he resign before a new leader is chosen? Will he deign to simply abandon the party he has served for 33 years? I think not. But what if the remaining possible contenders (Michael Ignatieff, Martin Cauchon, et al.) resist the ego trip to possible PM-ship? After all, it's without a doubt the worst time in Canadian history to take the reigns of the Liberal party. So if no one wants it, he just may be stuck with it. It would be comedic fodder for decades if he couldn't quit!

However, Martin deserves some credit. He stayed on board when the iceberg was spotted. He stayed on board when the iceberg was struck. He's stayed on board since the ship started sinking. He could have pulled a "Mulroney" and abandoned ship, leaving his own version of Kim Campbell to sink it to the bottom. But he didn't. And with an estimated personal net worth of $225 million US, it must have been a tempting jump to take.

Chris Penned. (And Penned Again and Again).

Tags: Chris Penn | Actors | Hollywood | Deaths

Another bummer from the world of entertainment—Chris Penn dead at forty. No cause of death as of yet, but he did weigh 300 pounds and had done his Hollywood fill of drugs.

I've only ever seen about 15 minutes of Footloose so I was surprised to find out that he was in it. However, I loved The Wild Life when I saw it on video as a kid.

However, what surprised me most was his wiki. The Chris Penn page on Wikipedia was created on January 16th 2006. During just over a year (374 days to be precise) between then and his death, his page was edited 20 times. In the two days since his death? 184! Nearly two hundred revisions were made between 2:08am January 25th and 3:02pm January 26th. In just 37 hours his page was subjected to 184 revisions.

People are rushing to be the first (or among the earliest) to provide "breaking news" and "critical updates" to sites—be them blogs, wikis, or whatever. I checked out his Wikipedia page as it's usually my first stop when verifying information—one article I read claimed that he was 43 while the other pegged him at 40.

I was not overly surprised to see that his date of death had already been added to the page. However, both of his brothers' pages had also been updated. So then I decided to check out his page's history of revisions. I couldn't believe it when I saw the amount of activity. People were in a mad rush to get any piece of the page they could grab—everything from expanding his filmography to correcting spelling mistakes and adding commas.

Long gone are the days when you'd read a story in the paper or hear on the radio or catch it on TV and that was the extent of the information you received.

Or are they? Hasn't it always like this? Before blogs and wikis and tags and 24/7 information, a guy named John Belushi died. And people heard about it on the radio or read it in the paper or saw it on TV. And then they went to work or went for drinks or took the subway or went shopping. And with their coworkers, friends, fellow passengers or shoppers, they talked about the tragic death of John Belushi. And each person had a tidbit of info the others didn't know. And those people couldn't wait to get home or get to work or get to the bar or get on the train to be the first to share their new tidbits with anyone they could. So it looks like I'll have to depart company with Mr. Mcluhan here—the medium's isn't the message, the message is the message.

Google China For No Results

Tags: China | Politics | Google | Censorship | Democracy