Oldie but a goodie - NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE

NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE

By John Cleese

To the citizens of the United States of America,

In the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. (Except Utah, which she does not fancy.)

Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect :

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour', skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise". You will learn that the suffix 'burgh is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed". There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won't have to use bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize".

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents - Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon". If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders" which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.

7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps". Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be
trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added
to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer", and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager". The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen
Knat's Urine", with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Knat's Urine". This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen, Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or "Gasoline" as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon - get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,
lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you
shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation and have a great day.

Ten to Avoid--the Worst Products of 2005 - Yahoo! News

Worth reading. I was thinking of getting one of those MP3 Cell Phones.

Ten to Avoid--the Worst Products of 2005
Jim Louderback - PC Magazine Mon Nov 21, 7:22 AM ET

It's the holiday season, time to pick up gifts for family and friends. We bring you the best stuff year-round, but often quality is in short supply this time of year. For you last-minute shoppers, here's my annual list of the ten worst products of the year—as scored and reviewed by PC Magazine Labs. These may all look shiny and sharp on the shelves, but each one is fundamentally flawed. You've been warned!

10. Oakley Thump: If you've overdone it with the eggnog, a $500 pair of sunglasses with a built-in MP3 player might seem a divine combination. It's not. The poorly fitting earbuds chafe, the glasses feel flimsy, and the style is dated. And what happens if you want to rock out at night? Unless you're buying for Bono, pick up an iPod shuffle and a pair of Revos for half the price.

9. Voodoo Doll D210: If you give someone this zippy breadbox-sized PC, they'll be sticking pins in your effigy all year—and you'll be out more than 3,000 smackeroos, too. Voodoo crammed two CPUs and two hard drives inside, but left out the keyboard, mouse, and monitor. If you buy one anyway, get a pair of industrial-strength ear protectors too, as it whines like a 747 taxiing for takeoff.

8. H2i SimplyTouch OpticalBar: Turn any monitor into a touch screen! That's the promise; the reality is different. The OpticalBar sits atop your monitor and tracks your finger as you touch special parts of the screen. Alas, it works more slowly than the midnight shift at an all-night diner, and often gets your order wrong, too. Opt for a tablet notebook instead.

7. ROKR E1: The Oakley Thump of the mobile phone set; at least it's a decent phone. The hype around "The First iTunes Phone" created unfulfillable expectations. It's not as polished as an iPod, and its oddly limited music storage makes a mediocre player even worse. Glacially slow music-transfer speeds put the final nail in this coffin. Sony Ericsson sells a much better MP3-phone combo, but I suggest a shuffle and a RAZR phone: Cheaper—and better, too.

6. Cinego D-1000: It slices! It dices! It projects your DVDs onto the wall! You might be tempted by this combination front-projector and DVD player, but stay away. Marred by a minuscule remote, nasty interface, and terrible video quality, it'll be quickly relegated to the garage or eBay. For budget home theater, hold out for HP's ep9010 combo, or pick up a cheaper projector and a DVD player for less.

5. PQI mPack P800 Media Player: Looking for a portable music and video player? The mPack looks attractive—you can record video and FM radio directly, and it even includes a CompactFlash slot. But playback is a problem. Even with the most recent flash update, fast-forward and rewind simply do not work, despite the manual's direction. The screen is terrible, the interface abysmal, and the physical buttons erratic. Apple's video iPod, the Creative Zen Vision, and anything from Archos deliver a better experience for less.

4. Dual XNAV3500P: Even alpha males can use a little GPS assistance now and then. This hybrid car and portable mapping system seems solid—until you start using it. Marred by an awful interface and a poor data-entry keypad, it failed our tests. Pick up a TomTom GO, or give an IOU for Garmin's amazing Nuvi, debuting here in January.

3. PepperPad: Following in the footsteps of the Audrey, Netpliance, and NIC, this is an Internet bubble failure five years too late. More expensive than a laptop, with a battery life measured in minutes, and a tiny 8- by 6-inch touch screen, this home Internet tablet has few redeeming features. Unless you're a fan of freaky keyboards, opt for a cheap tablet PC instead.

2. Sony S2 Sports Network Walkman NW-S23: Pity poor Sony. It invented the Walkman and then squabbled as Apple stole its lunch. This player finally supports MP3 files, yet it lacks so much else that it's hardly worth the price. With ergonomics straight from a Klingon warship, balky software, and a poor display, this one deserves a place in the remainder rack. Again, you're better off with a shuffle.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for... the worst product of the year—and from a surprising source.

1. Samsung Digimax V700: Samsung can seemingly do no wrong these days. The company has supplanted Sony as the top electronics brand, exuding both quality and cool. We hope this terrible digital camera is an aberration, not a sign of things to come. With slow performance, lousy auto-exposure, and some shutter lag, this 7.1-megapixel camera never should have been released. Compact cameras from Canon, Sony and Nikon are far better—even if they do cost a bit more.

Things have never been so swell - Music

~Music~


Orgy - Blue Monday

D.H.T. - Listen to Your Heart - Get the accoustic if you can, nice cover

Martika - Toy Soldiers

Rob Thomas - Lonely No More

Nirvana - You Know You're Right

At least read the polls at this lyric site. It's everything and nothing.

Interesting News pt. 1.5

Nation mourns bird killed in domino shooting


AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch animal lovers are mourning a sparrow shot dead after it fluttered into an exhibition hall and knocked over thousands of dominoes set up in preparation for a world record attempt.

The sparrow will be commemorated in a live Dutch television broadcast of the domino-toppling Friday after a wave of national outrage at the shooting.

"We know we are responsible for a lot of emotion in the country and we realize we couldn't go on without properly marking this," said Jeroen van Waardenberg, a spokesman for reality TV company Endemol, the firm behind "Big Brother."

An exterminator shot the sparrow Monday in the northern city of Leeuwarden after fears the bird could upset more of the 4 million dominoes which staff had spent weeks balancing on their edges for the record attempt.

Dutch animal rights groups are outraged, especially as sparrows are a protected species in the Netherlands.

Hundreds of condolence messages have been posted on a website for the sparrow (www.dodemus.nl), which has attracted 200,000 hits.

Link to the cell phone story

The Saga of the Broken Cell Phone

The Saga of the Broken Cell Phone pt. 8

Now, I'm not entirely optimistic about this, but the situation with the cell phone could be resolved. Here's a hint: We had to go back to where we started from.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm shell-shocked.

Would you have had the patience to do what I did? Or would you have paid for the repair?

Thanks for the laughs, I've been happy to share this experience with you all :-)

The Saga of the Broken Cell Phone Pt. 6? or 7?

Yup, I'm still mad. I can't sleep. I'm mad that I didn't keep that dang paperwork safe. I'm mad about all the changes in their story.

I'm going to get that stupid phone disconnected, pay the fee for ending my term 2 months early (As it now stands, that is. Read the whole story) and throw the dang thing in the garbage. Maybe I could throw a nice "Broken Cell Phone Smashing" party. Hmm.

I'm going to go try to sleep, again.

-Sheri

The Saga of the Broken Cell Phone

Saga of the Broken Cell Phone Continues

Click on the title of this post to see the webpage I've created, dedicated to the Saga of the Broken Cell Phone. I deleted most of my previous posts on this subject, simply because it was too hard to follow the story in a newest-at-the-top format. Plus, the story rather deserves it's own page. I'd say it was funny, if I wasn't about to go completely insane. I'm sure it will be funny, in a few years.

It's totally worth reading, even if it is a little bit long.

*Heeheehehheheheheahhahahahahehehahaha*

My phone is still broken. Will it ever get fixed? Read the story at www.r1chard.ca (It's in the drop-down menu, if you're going to type that in your address bar.)

I'll keep you updated as the situation unfurls.

-Sheri

Saga of the Broken Cell Phone Part 5

That's it, this is just too funny. I'm going to turn this into it's own page on my website. Keep checking www.r1chard.ca to see if it's up yet.

Sheri

Interesting News pt. 2

If anything will make the stuffed shirts stand up and take notice, I'd say that this is it.

Male fish with eggs in sewage off California coast - Yahoo! News: "Male fish with eggs in sewage off California coast

By Nichola Groom Mon Nov 14, 6:56 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Researchers have found male fish with eggs in their testes and female sex traits off the coast of Southern California and believe that chemicals in sewage may be the cause, an author of two studies said on Monday.

The two reports found the changes in fish such as English sole and California halibut, both of which are bottom dwellers, in water near where sewage is released, said Dan Schlenk, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Riverside.

High levels of estrogen, both natural and man-made formulations used in birth control pills, are thought to cause such abnormalities in fish. Estrogen makes its way into sewage water and then the ocean through women's excretions.

Compounds that act like estrogen, found in certain industrial chemicals, have also been blamed for such changes.

But in this instance, Schlenk said higher levels of the egg protein were found in male fish in areas with lower levels of estrogen and estrogen-like chemicals in the sediment. The cause of the female characteristics, therefore, could be unknown chemicals in the sediment, he said.

'We might have other players in this game,' Schlenk said in an interview on Monday. 'We would guess they are primarily coming from waste water.'

He said the sewage contained natural and man-made chemicals that was deposited in ocean sediment.

One of the culprits could be DDT, Schlenk said, a pesticide banned in the United States in 1972 after it was shown to cause reproductive damage to birds. DDT is no longer used but can remain in the environment for a long time.

Los Angeles County's sewage outfall, Schlenk said, 'has probably one of the most contaminated DDT sites in North America, and these responses are fairly consistent with that kind of exposure.'

Interesting News pt. 1

Facetious. I love it. Note the last 2 lines.

Boycott Endemol NV!!!

Sparrow Knocks Over 23,000 Dominoes

Mon Nov 14, 4:47 PM ET

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A sparrow knocked over 23,000 dominoes in the Netherlands, nearly ruining a world record attempt before it was shot to death Monday, the state news agency reported.

The unfortunate bird flew through an open window at an exposition center in the northern city of Leeuwarden where employees of television company Endemol NV have worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes on Friday night.

Only a system of 750 built-in gaps in the chain prevented the bird from knocking most or all of the dominoes over ahead of schedule, "Domino Day"; organizers were quoted as saying by the NOS news agency.

The bird was shot by an exterminator with an air rifle while cowering in a corner.

The organizers are out to break their own record of 3,992,397 dominoes set last year with a new record of 4,321,000.

New Baby Pictures

It was Tommy's first birthday last week, so I took a bunch of cute new pictures of him. They're up on the site now, so check it out. :-) Lovelovelove that baby! www.r1chard.ca

This is soooo cool!!!

Check out this link!!! I wish I was a Tween again, so I could get myself one of these, I'm so impressed. It's a computer but it's a pen. The paper is the input device, and the pen provides the output.

Make sure that you don't miss the Flytones and Calculator sections of the site, it's amazing. I can't wait until I can get a "Grown-up," one, I just know that it could be HUGE.

Link to the Fly Pentop site