you would think sir paul would not be so keen on a coffee chain distributing his music....cash crops and all

yup - i would call this jay leno clip racist

remember this moment of dr who when living in australia

i really like this guy's concept of a pixel....

only ones
lipsynching and live

excited about maurice sendak and spike jonze

i am on an fda mailing list for life threatening recalls:
FDA posts press releases and other notices of recalls and market withdrawals from the firms involved as a service to consumers, the media, and other interested parties. FDA does not endorse either the product or the company. This listserv covers mainly Class I (life-threatening) recalls. A complete listing of recalls can be found in the FDA Enforcement Report at: http://www.fda.gov/opacom/Enforce.html

beyond blowfish being labelled as monkfish - i thought this recall is pretty funny considering the product name:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Atlanta, GA -- August 27, 2007 -- Bella Cucina of Atlanta, Georgia is recalling units of Death by Chocolate cookies [my emphasis] if your bag does not correctly state that the product contains walnuts. People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to Walnuts run the risk of serious or life threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products.

celine can't be that bad:
Although the Academy Awards ceremony didn’t sit too well with Smith, and he, as well as his bright white suit, was trashed on television, he says it did force him to change his mind about Celine Dion, who performed right after he did. "She was really sweet, which has made it impossible for me to dislike Celine Dion anymore. Even though I can’t stand the music that she makes -- with all due respect I don’t like it much at all -- but she herself was very, very nice. She asked me if I was nervous and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And she was like, ‘That’s good because you get your adrenaline going, and it’ll make your song better. It’s a beautiful song.’ Then she gave me a big hug. It was too much. It was too human to be dismissed simply because I find her music trite."

i want

my favourite segment on fame....except it doesn't show that jimmy osmond FREAKS OUT when all the students rush to congratulate him....

tom jones and janis joplin

angry about pet food contamination and so on? they executed the guy!....

worthy of dangermouse...

i think i actually walked by this guy playing in a frantic michael hedges stylee on prince arthur - i was wowed but in a rush so didn't stop....although i almost just stopped to buy his cd

this american life:
Glass, who personally contributed over 2,000 anecdotes from his own life for documentation, called the project's conclusion the "end of an era."


onion article

gauchos

best article i've read so far on the pet food recall. i have a je mondou can of tuna on my desk (possibly part of the recall - ups number same but not the expiry date)
which i've marked "poison"....i realize that might be a little too close to "poisson"....

baden powell plays samba triste

and him many years later

From a document on the Quebec government's site

A quote from what I assume is associated with the Protestant School Board (I need to read the whole doc):

At the same time, the Committee points out the importance of emphasizing the Judaeo-Christian heritage of Québec society. Québec’s cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, it says, should not neutralize our own convictions and values (p. 4).

i love playing takamine acoustic basses - i want one of these

joni

the police

spoof of herouxville - that sad, sad, little town....

here are some excerpts from the letter section that do a pretty good job of following the actual site:

Salutations,

Moi j'ai une farme pis j'ai pas envi ki fassent pousser des légumes bizarres pis que ma terre soit pognée avec des bebites de pays chauds. Chu ben près à les accepter mais pas à n'importe quel prix.

Jacques Éroule
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bonjour ,
l faut pas généraliser quand même, y prennent pas tous du sang de chrétiens pour faire de l'Azyme ! Moi je connais un japonais qui est vraiment cool pis sage à l'intérieur de lui. En plus il y a ceux qui apportent des affaires le fun comme le karaté ou les tacos. Pis aussi, il y a ceux qui sont d'apparence immigrants mais que dans le fond y son québécois.

Bon succes ,

Guy Éroule

Terrebonne

nusrat video

why
google suggestions for why
i assume these are the top why questions....

hum a song and it will find it
pretty impressive - it actually got every song i did (if it was in the database)....content based indexing of music. whois says the domain is owned by this guy who heads this company

gingerbread hindu man

gingerbread hindu man
Originally uploaded by prasun.

rupe's baking

the google toolbar
i was impressed enough by the google search capability of doing calculations like
37 choose 9
but now they have added that to the suggestions for the google toolbar
look in the top right corner
wow
btw - that is the total cortical surface area in the human brain....

eyeyeye

eyeyeye
Originally uploaded by lawlawland.

i get this type of spam all the time but seeing the first line made me laugh out loud and read the rest. i love the fact that the spammer doesn't care but they have some stats to back up who does...:

Hello sir

I don't care why your weenie is so small, but 86% of women do.
They are pretty sure that bigger meat will make their desire
stronger. You have the chance to change your life.

Here (link deleted) you can get the thing.

It will help you for sure.
The remedy can be sent worldwide.
If you wont be satisfied - we will return all you money.
No bullshit.

bombs and guitars

merry christmas

merry christmas
Originally uploaded by princesselizard.

i think liz used a long exposure....

live music

favourite snl musical guest performance

i did a search for the word porn in my gmail account. it seems that almost every single village voice newsletter that i have received (since 2004) has the word porn somewhere in it.

recovered from my semi outdoor storage - one casette tape with chrw recording (30 min of it) of the archers of loaf playing at the embassy hotel in london, ont on thursday march 23, 1995.
near the end you hear tom and i challenging the archers to a cage fight....matt gentling responds in kind.

listening to some vinyl i snagged from my dad - and suddenly realized the pixies stole from (paid homage to) sammy davis jr. i have but one life to live (a song i remember well from my childhood) starts with a drumbeat and sammy screaming "hey! get it on!" (or is it "get it off"?). can't remember the name of the pixies song that copies it (although i can hear the riff) but black francis sure draws from a varied bag of tricks....

halloween in quebec....'nuff said

goose giving me another hear attack two stories up....

Untitled Sundae #1162256232

Untitled Sundae #1162256232
Originally uploaded by straup.

halloween/alexander's bday 2006

Indradg... doing something.

Indradg... doing something.
Originally uploaded by sayamindu.

this was geotagged in kolkata....what the ????

so what

rich solo

i remember seeing this live - bing and bowie

gilbert gottfried's voice lent to clippy as microsoft announced they were getting rid of him with xp...what happened?
too bad - there was another cartoon (i couldn't find) where he types up a resume - was funny....

on the "very freaky because it's scary" front - an organization called the cult awareness network was driven to bankruptcy by the church of scientology
and then a scientology member bought the name and assets at a bankruptcy sale and they now run it. whoa.
on a related note - chris (or was it mike) reminded me that when we were at expo 86 in vancouver as teenagers scientologists tried to recruit us and showed us some film at their spaceship HQ....my memories are vague....i think the film was....amusing.

babs made up a new word: pissable.
an excerpt of my msn conversation with him (in munich):
A.N.R.A. says:
I didn't think that was pissible
A.N.R.A. says:
possible
Prasun says:
but he made a very good point about wiki
A.N.R.A. says:
either way
A.N.R.A. says:
wait I just coined another term
A.N.R.A. says:
pissible
Prasun says:
it is funny though - i am using wiki a lot for looking up advanced math
A.N.R.A. says:
l..... :0
Prasun says:
i think pissable might exist
Prasun says:
if i swallow a radioactive spider - do you think the radioactivity will be pissable if i want to mark my name on a wall and have it read by a geiger counter
Prasun says:
e.g.

i freaked out - my two favourite acoustic guitarists together

i actually remember this episode of square pegs....i didn't remember it was john densmore though

saw a disturbing vid on youtube of maggot being removed from someone's head (i think the term maggot must be wrong since it was feeding on live tissue)....anyways - seems to be true according to the bbc

Magic parking lot

Magic parking lot
Originally uploaded by prasun.

hmm does that mean you can pretty much always park there or never park there?
in practice...."always"

i love alvin lee live

i never even saw the original movie - and i still find this hilarious....

the resto owner is changing the name

i cannot believe that it is only the indian jewish community that is protesting the new "hitler's cross" resto in mumbai. it is not like india is normally big on "freedom of speech" with its recent controversy about shutting down blogging....incredible.

my hard disk on my server crashed last week
on the advice of fellow student aptly named lucky13 - i froze the hard disk for 1/2 hour and was able to boot it again and backup data....it really wouldn't boot until i froze it in a ziplock bag. so the internet rumours are true - apparently it works about 50% of the time....
i found an old disk that wasn't needed - installed everything - but then realized it was SO noisey i couldn't take it. so i removed it....finally found another that wasn't needed and just finished reinstalling redhat + all appropriate directories....hopefully this disk lasts longer....

barbara dennerlein - watch her feet...

turns out was not in the apartment itself in the back storage...still disgusting...but less so...

maybe this is not appropriate to have online....but....
mon voisin - martin - il est fou. il composte.
his compost exploded a few days ago. it smelled like shit (not in my apartment though).
i had my fears.
i just found out from another neighbour that it litterally dripped down the walls of martin's downstairs neighbour....
the feces is apparently his own.
i have a feeling i am soon going to have a new neighbour....

ok go

Archers of Loaf in Montreal in 1995....I was at this show.

hacked
won't get into details - but my computer got hacked because i was using a version of realvnc that had a bug letting anybody remotely log onto your computer without a password. very annoying.

pirates and emperors
schoolhouse rocks! gets a great face lift:

i just submitted a typo to the nobel prize people:

Hi - I just wanted to let you know about a typo on this page:http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/biographical/index.html
Alfred Nobel (1883-1896) – was born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 21, 1833.
I assume the initial 1883 should read 1833!

i'm pretty sure bjork's song cvalda must have been inspired by gainsbourg's comic strip

this is how you cause a riot

The Goodies - used to love this show....

foreign accent syndrome after stroke

ok - too much time on th'ol U toob
check out brian jones in this

chet baker - my favourite of his standards

wow
i mentioned an article written by a canadian soldier in a previous post....
he is one of the un soldiers that was killed by israeli bombing...

more palmpilot comics

palmpilot comics
an example of the bengali word apatata (ah-pa-tho-tho) which kinda means "meanwhile"....

The Who - remember - this 1965

Dirty Mac from the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

i'm curious - with the magnifying glass that is on the middle east right now (i mean in terms of scrutiny although you could argue also in terms of burning a hole in the map) why have these incidents not been reported in the western media even though it is in a UN press release:

Noting that the past month had witnessed one shooting incident and a subsequent exchange of fire across the Blue Line, he said that on 1 February, the Israel Defense Forces had shot a Lebanese shepherd in the Shab’a Farms area [emphasis added by me]. In response to that shooting, on 3 February, Hizbollah had fired two rockets in the direction of an Israel Defense Forces position in the area in which the shepherd’s body had been found. The Israel Defense Forces had responded with artillery, small-arms fire and two air strikes. Hizbollah had responded with small-arms fire and 15 Katyusha rockets. Three artillery rounds fired from unknown locations had impacted approximately 200 metres east of a United Nations position near Kafr Shuba. Israeli air violations of the Blue Line had continued, albeit less frequently, during the past month. According to Lebanese military and media reports, Israeli jets had violated Lebanese airspace on 14 February during the first anniversary of Hariri’s assassination, although they had not been observed by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The United Nations reiterated its call on the Israeli authorities to halt those breaches of Lebanese sovereignty and fully respect the Blue Line.

it is obviously relevant to recent events, so it is strange that it is only reported in the arab media. so much so that i was having my doubts as to its validity until i found it on the UN site...
i have only found two refs to it (at this time) - one in a canadian soldier's write-in piece and another in a new zealand opinion piece.

jared is on fire

i find this much better than the weird "reality" ads of kids talking about wetting their beds.... warning explicit cartoon baby tiger genitalia and cartoon caca....

flying tar
workers fixing the roof spent a lot of time flinging down huge pieces of roofing managing to rip my clothesline out of the wall and fuck up my phone line.
subsequently, it was a huge hassle to get access to the back courtyard so the bell tech could install a new line.
on the plus side - i met the owner of the building next door, "chacha", who informed me that she and my landlord are in a huge feud - apparently he thinks she broke a gate to get access to the courtyard; she points out it's probably the neighbourhood crack addicts.
should be an interesting summer.

homely
i just made a change to the wiktionary adding an entry for homely
- very empowering...
in case it gets erased:
Proficient in skills needed to maintain a home (common usage - Indian subcontinent e.g. in matrimonial advertisements)

my cousins were quite surprised to learn of the common dictionary meaning.
i figure a billion english speakers using it that way has to count for something....

a message from marn - when the habs were still in the playoffs....
(i've deleted her phone number)

This contains the classic sound of someone hitting the ground that only the pink panther series got right. We would try to recreate it in highschool to no avail....listen for it when the guy gets hit by a boulder....

reeeeally?

summer = time to shave

OK - Goose just ate a centipede. As I was googling whether it is safe for her to do so (since they can bite and cause swelling like a bee-sting) I came across all these links to a video of a Giant Centipede eating a mouse....I linked to it myself but then thought anyone just can google it themselves if they want trouble sleeping at night....

Made a new server for home because the noise was driving me crazy. So resurrected and reinstalled a machine with a 400 MHz processor to replace my 200 MHz processor machine. Wow - went from 9 yr old technology to 7 yr old technology...and it's still kind of noisy.

Made Jack Rustle songs available for download....

Cup of Robots by a gantry robot

cupofrobots_by_gantryrobot
Originally uploaded by prasun.

my first flickr upload after more than a year of having an account on flickr....blame aaron (for the t-shirt AND for making me upload a photo of it)

Dr. Seuss and Mel Blanc team up....the early years

i am getting addicted to this site - operate model trains over the web and watch them move in realtime....

mr ducks
mr not ducks
m2 r ducks, cdedbd wings?
well oil beef hooked. mr ducks

Very nice drawings here - makes me want to get a tablet...but first i should use the watercolours given to me last year....

Quebec pop? Go figure....

apparently - today is the most depressing day of the year

The transport gods are after me. My car was stolen last week. I got it back at the end of the week as the thieves (I suspect a couple of homeless kids) were arrested in Quebec City. Nice and toasty with a 101 fever I took a morning bus to Quebec, cab ride to the towing yard, had the guy show me how to start my car with a screwdriver, drove back to Montreal in a storm and dropped it off at the garage. Before even doing any repairs I'd shelled out over $200 just to get my stolen car back - $100 just to the towing company. (I don't have insurance). Beyond leaving the car a shithole with my personal belongings strewn all over the back seat intermingled with their clothes (including underwear) - they were kind enough to bust the ignition, a window, the lock to the trunk, and rip out the back seat.
The gods ain't done quite yet. I just brought my bike in from outside as it was finally above zero and I could unlock the frozen bike lock - i figured I'd "dry out" the lock inside so I could start using my bike again. No go. It seems one of Montreal's finest snowplough drivers decided to use my bike as a battering ram. The frame is a pretzel.
Tommorrow I expect to find my shoes burned to a crisp under the transport gods' magnifying glass of terror....

I was at a party last night and realized my blog-failings (or failed-bloggings). People prefaced ideas with "I just talked about this on my weblog...."
I didn't keep silent though. I talked about Batman because he is well published already.

Jive me
The Dialectizer

Burt studied music at McGill?
All Music Guide: Burt Bacharach

clowns can be REALLY scary. cruising around twenty at a time in their VW beetles. i watched a clown join a medieval battle in le parc du mont royal (many knights, very few maidens). he was indestructible with his dagger against their giant bastard duct-taped nerf swords.

I ended up getting the B1 on ebay... a good deal and new...and yup - i still like it.

i like this - i think i want it - it's cheap:
B1