Boss, Boss, ze call, ze call!

   The call for submissions to CarnivAOL has gone out. The next edition will be published Tuesday, August 2, 2005. Spread the word to all and sundry.

Godlessness abounds

   The penultimate entry over at St. Nate's Blog is the 18th Carnival of the Godless. Lots of excellent reading to be had. Our very own Point & Counterpoint has been featured there for the posts submitted by Rebecca and myself. Cool.

A suggestion

London Police Kill Man At Tube Station. (via. AOL News)

   Muslim leaders expressed concern at the shooting. Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said he had spoken to "jumpy and nervous" Muslims since the shooting. "I have just had one phone call saying `What if I was carrying a rucksack?' It's vital the police give a statement about what occurred and explain why the man was shot dead," he said.

   I have a suggestion. When the police yell at you to stop, don't run away, vault the barriers at the subway station, and attempt to board a train. When the police yell at you to stop, stop. When the police yell at you to lie down with your hands behind your head, lie down with your hands behind your head. when the police determine that you are not a threat, you may request of them an apology. Only the guilty run.

Anticipation

   An applicant for the James Randi Educational Foundation One Million Dollar Challenge will undergo his preliminary test tomorrow. We await the result with bated breath.

Bandwagoning

I'm a Ravenclaw!

   What Hogwarts house do you belong in?

Weekend assignment

Weekend Assignment #69: You've been hired to create a whole new ice cream flavor that's never been thought of before (so far as you know). What flavor do you create? For this assignment you can pick any flavor -- or combination of flavors -- that you like, but, you know, try to make it something that you'd actually want to eat. Also, try to give it an ice-creamy name, like how Ben & Jerry's chocolate and cherry ice cream is called "Cherry Garcia." Mmm... Cherry Garcia.

Extra Credit: Oh, fine. Create an utterly inedible ice cream flavor, too. Try not to make it too gross, and definitely don't make it a TOS violation. But it can include ingredients that you wouldn't really put into food. Usually.

   I sat and wracked my brains for some time trying to come up with an assortment of ingredients that would make the perfect ice cream. I finally realised that there is only one ingredient in the perfect ice cream. 
   My ice cream recipe may not be entirely original, but I don't know if it has been done commercially to this extreme before. Start with chocolate ice cream. Not just any chocolate ice cream, but the thickest, richest, creamiest, chocolatiest ice cream you can make. Add chocolate chips. Not the shaved chocolate bits that you usually find in a chocolate chip ice cream, but the big, drop shaped chips you use in homemade chocolate chip cookies. Mix in a generous helping of chocolate fudge brownie chunks; the richest, moistest, fudgiest brownie chunks you can find. Through it all, run a swirl of chocolate syrup, just like you would find drizzled over the finest malt shop sundae.
   What would I call it? Well, descriptively, it would be Chocolate Chocolate Chip Chocolate Fudge Brownie Chocolate Sundae, but that seemed a little unwieldy, so I asked my wife what she thought. She didn't even hesitate. My ice cream is called Better Than Sex.

Extra Credit: Creamed Corn Au Gratin. Mmm.

July 23, 6:40pm. Edited to Add: I was perusing Olddog299's entry, and was inspired to create a new flavour as a tribute to Canadian legislators. I have combined peach champagne and pink bubblegum flavoured ice creams in a delicious mixture I call Gay Marriage.

Point & Counterpoint

I can't remember. Am I the Point or the Counterpoint?

 

CarnivAOL

   Just a note to say that the first edition of CarnivAOL has been put up. It is a carnival of the vanities for AOL journals. Check it out.

 

Weekend Assignment

Weekend Assignment #68: Take a moment to appreciate something French. Tell us about that French thing you most appreciate. It could be anything, from a particular French wine to your favorite French filmmaker to the fact they like Jerry Lewis more than we.

   Being Canadian, I don't have to reach as far as France to experience The French. We have a whole province of them right here. The Actual French sneer at their colonial cousins, considering them not really French at all; merely Quebecois. Certainly, the language has drifted over the years, to the point where speaking Parisian french in Quebec will get you sneered at, and vice versa. To be fair, the French are not the most insufferable language snobs on the planet. That honour falls to the Swiss, who claim to speak the purest form of the French language. In reply, and I believe I can speak for most of the rest of the world, I say, "whatever."
   It is fitting, then, that my favourite French contribution to the world comes, not from France, but from Canada. I don't know who it was that first had the idea of sprinkling some white cheese curds over a plate of French Fries, and then smothering the whole thing in steaming hot gravy, but that person deserves some kind of monument. Poutine is one of the true pleasures in life.
   Of course, many fast food establishments around North America serve something they call Poutine. Do not be fooled. The only poutine actually worth eating must be accquired from a Chip Truck, examples of which can be found scattered around Quebec and Eastern Ontario.

Extra Credit: Been to France? Some of your vacation pictures would be nice to see.

   I did say I have never been to France, but here's a picture of a very young me trying to look sophisticated over a boule de cafe au lait in Lower Town, Quebec City.

 

Some quick silliness

stolen from Skatje.

1. Take the lyrics to a favorite song.
2. Go to Google Language Tools, tranlate the lyrics into German, then from German to French, and finally from French back into English.
3. Post the results verbatim.
4. Invite friends to guess the song based on the interesting new lyrics.

   Under the city two strike the machines of heart of hearts, which per night thus offers in the race of rooms to be slept, which by whispering the soft refusal closed with key is and given then in the uptown of tunnel have the rat dreamer that it cuts down, whereas projectiles to the bottom it halls in the night aucunes clock, if the ambulance drawing aside or, whereas the girl concludes from the light of room to be laid down outside road on fires in material deathwaltz enters, which real meat and which to the bottom here imagination and the poets are, nothing all writes back and him right all echoes and in the fast night they during their moment to reach and test, with the form, but it rollings up not even completely this night in Jungleland wounded an honest place upwards