Photo of the week

Sam Kirk finds a roadside ad for a Dry Grad Manure Sale at a local high school.

Johnny Paycheck, where are you when I need you?

I need to switch jobs.

While I whinge to myself, please check out the Bob Larson Fan Club Homepage, which I hope gets updated some day.

Hey DJ, this is the *flip* side!

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, I guess that record companies had to make it painfully obvious to disc jockeys which side was intended to be the hit and which song was intended to be the extra one that you'd never play. Buzz Clifford's 1960 hit Baby Sittin' Boogie is a case in point.

I've played the flip side, Driftwood, for the first time this morning. Here are the lyrics:

Driftwood
A floating piece of heartbreak
Our love is...Driftwood!
The residue of heartaches
Surrounded by teardrops,
Darling, since you drifted from me.
My love for you tells me that I am destined to be only...

Driftwood!
Upon a tear-filled ocean
I've lost direction
'neath waves of sad emotion.
I'm laid up, divided by your love
and drifting helplessly....

Driftwood has its own charms--I like it better than the A-side! But, with its Joe Meek-like or "Incorrect Music"-esque stylings, it was only supposed to be played by accident when the disc jockey wasn't looking at the labels carefully. Too bad.

Can't top this

As much as I love my parents, I won't be encoraging them to celebrate one of their 60th birthdays by saying yes, if they ask the entire family to go skydiving with them.

Miss Smith also has a grandmother who says interesting things at dinner which you would not wish her to say if the Queen was your dinner guest.

Although, I can't go to a certain Mexican restaurant any time soon due to my uncle, but I was too mortified at the time to share any more.

Is Gordon Campbell still a goner?

I've reminded readers of The Shotgun of that prophecy by U.S. christian prophet Jim Goll last year that Gordon Campbell's days of Premier of B.C. are numbered and that the B.C. Liberals are going to lose the current B.C. election. All the juicy details are there.

(Although, if a giant disembodied hand writes "Mene, Mene, Tekel" on the wall of the B.C. Liberal headquarters, all bets are off. ;) )

Things I overhear at bus shelters, Part 1

Young lady talking on a cell phone:

I think his name rhymes with 'ovary'. Oh, its Ovi. I think he's from Israel..."

Things I overhear on the bus, Part 1

A frumpy, middle-aged lady talking to a friend on her cell phone:

"Throwing a lit match at you is *not* respect!"

Unshackling

Kathy Shaidle has discovered Unshackled, the very long running Christian radio drama.

She hasn't heard the program, but I have. I can assure her that it is very old fashioned radio, but not scary at all. It runs on my one of my local Christian radio stations in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I haven't heard it in years due to my wierd shift on Saturdays, and my computer being too old to use the online broadcasting software that they use at www.unshackled.org.

I can imagine that the program reaches a lot of people who are driving the freeways in the wee hours of the night and don't mind a program that sounds like it was first broadcast in the 1930s. And Unshackled supports the Pacific Garden Mission, a shelter for the homeless in Chicago, so you should give it points for that.

Got spoilers?

Michael Jenkinson can tell you all about the plot of Revenge of the Sith, because he has read the book.

Disunite the right

In the run-up to B.C.'s provincial election, it seems that the free enterprise parties other than the B.C. Liberals are being very quiet. Other than a Vancouver Sunstory a couple of weeks ago, which poked fun at B.C. Tory leader Barry Chilton for not owning his own house and staying with friends, I haven't seen anything on the B.C. Unity Party or other vote splitters. Perhaps Jordan Bateman would know, but I haven't heard anything.

I'm not the "60 second Socred" type, and I am hoping that the B.C. Liberals are not my only choice.

People you run into

Since Jordan Bateman has a tale about this guy with a B.C. Lions hat that he often runs into while buying coffee, I think I should share about Dog With A TV Dinner.

Several times now, I have passed a man walking south on Vancouver's Commercial Drive, with a dog on a leash. The dog always has a TV Dinner (today some kind of Michelina's pasta dish) clenched in his mouth. I don't blame the dog, as a TV dinner is sometimes better tasting than a stick, but I have sometimes wondered why the man doesn't carry the meal himself. Does the dog only eat TV dinners?

Perhaps I should ask. The man, I mean, not the dog.

I'm being flung directly into purgatory, without dying first, for this post

I don't mean to detract from Kathy Shaidle's fine updates following the death of the Pope, but after reading this:

"We're on a Mission from God"

That's the name of a book about Pope John Paul II from Ignatius Press , geared at Gen-X Catholics. Not surprisingly, Ignatius has plenty of JPII books on offer, including George Weigel's definitive bio, and the video version, which is more easily digestible....

...I wondered if anyone else immediately thought of the movie The Blues Brothers, as Jake Blues keeps on using the phrase "We're on a mission from God," to justify his exploits. In the movie, the Blues Brothers are hunted by Nazis, are shot at and almost blown up by a crazed lady, and tanks (and dozens of police cars) chase them into downtown Chicago.

I doubt, though, that being "on a mission from God" meant that John Paul II sang back up on "Stand By Your Man" during The Blues Brothers' set at Bob's Country Bunker (where they play both kinds of music, country and western). I'm fairly certain that His Holiness, who was a great Pope, had a different mission from God.