Critic

There are some jobs out there that everybody wants.  A lot of those dream jobs end with the word critic. There's film critic, book critic, art critic,  video game critic and food critic.  This got me thinking, why not become one of these critics?  Then I realized, why would I want to limit myself to criticize just one thing when I would prefer to criticize everything?

Now the title of "critic" alone would be great but as soon as you add a suffix to the end it's just a way of limiting the things that you can complain about.  Think of all things that your opinion would no longer be valid for.  "What do you know about politics, Nick, you're just a food critic?"  I couldn't even watch a football game with my friends anymore.  "Oh look.  Mr. Book Critic thinks he knows about sports now too; it must be nice being a nerdler-know-it-all."  Now in all honesty, I hear those complaints already, just without the term food critic or book critic on the end.  But why should I add fuel to the fire?

I've been told by my wife that the purpose of a critic is to judge the merit of something and not merely criticize it.  However, I feel that the title of "critic" affords one the right to criticize if thats what he or she want to do.  I'm not entirely certain that everything that I'm saying is a criticism either.  Is it my fault that I thought the ice cream was way too cold and that the sky's too blue?

Wood Grain

The idea behind veneer is that you cover up a cheep wood with a thin layer of nicer more expensive wood.  My mom used the veneer philosophy with t-shirts when I was growing.  She would buy cheap multi-packs of plain white shirts then proceed to paint various brand names and logos onto the shirts.  To be fair, my mom has an incredible talent for painting and drawing.  Nobody at school ever knew that the "Guess" shirt I was wearing was actually just a veneer hiding a plain shirt recently purchased from Zellers.

Wood veneers are not new.  They've been around for hundreds of years.   In the '70s, plastics started being produced.  The goal with plastic at the time was to try and make it look like wood .  Soon plastic wood veneers started showing up on everything from televisions to tables.  This happened until the '80s, when somebody realized that not everything had to look like wood and plastic could simply be a solid color.

Eventually something cheaper will replace plastic.  We'll be so accustomed to plastic that we wont be able to simply get rid of it.  To fill the transition period the new product will have to be made to look like plastic.  "That looks exactly like a plastic wood grained veneer, I would have never guessed that it wasn't plastic."   Why not start collecting all of those future plastic antiques now?  I would but I'm in the middle of a law suit from wearing one of the shirts that my mom made me.   Something about copywrite infringement involving a maximum $250,000 fine and up to 7 years in prison.

Offensive Playbook

I never thought that I would say this pre-invention of a time machine "the Saskatchewan Roughriders have just won first place in the western division".  Actually, they tied for first place and then won the game of rock-paper-scissors over Calgary.  Luckily, Calgary has become predictable always picking rock, allowing us to pick up an easy win by simply selecting paper.  Calgary wanted a best 2 out of 3 but rules are rules.

The Roughriders haven't finished in first place since 1976.  Considering that there are only 4 teams in the division thats 6.5 times less than they would have if the league had in 1977 adopted the proposed sharing of victories to encourage cooperation and generosity among the younger and more impressionable fans.  I can see the reasoning for voting against such a proposal at the time but history has proved that decision wrong.

I've gone over some game tape of past roughrider seasons.  My goal was to find out why there have been so few 1st place finishes in the franchise's history.  I'm not a football expert, but I do believe that when your offensive playbook only consists of three plays (run, pass, punt) it makes it very difficult to put together a winning season.  This kind of offense relies heavily on shut-out defense that produces turnovers within field goal range and consistent punt returns for touchdowns.  Why not change up the playbook this Sunday?  Because Calgary always picks rock.

Hover Mower

Mowing the lawn can be extremely dangerous at the best of times.  To help kids become more responsible, we put them in charge of an inverted helecopter that can cut off their limbs or anyones around them with one missed step.  I'm just wondering who was teaching my parents responsibility while I was out cutting the grass?  

I first learned how to mow when I was 9 years old.  At the time, I was a little over 4 feet tall.  That means the push handle was parallel to the top of my head.  I was definitely not tall enough to go on the ride but that didn't stop my dad from teaching me.  By teaching me, I mean he would start the mower.  Mowing the lawn really isn't that difficult, but imagine the mower being 6 feet tall and weighing the same as you.

So obviously the problem is that the mower's just too big and heavy for a kid until they are at least 12 years of age.  That problem has been solved by the good people at Flymo.  They have invented a mower that hovers above the lawn making it virtually weightless.  Now kids as young as 5 or 6 will be able to get out and risk injury via the lawnmower.  Why not starting learning responsible when your younger rather live to learn about it when your older?

Cat Videos

You could search for anything on YouTube and no matter what, it will yield at least one cat video.  Soon, nobody will able to load anything new to YouTube because the servers will be full of cat videos.  Imagine all of the important videos of...  okay I'm really not sure what the point of YouTube is, but there won't be any room for it.  This will cause a new rule to be put in place banning the upload of any new cat videos.  Once the new servers are in place and there is room for new uploads I doubt the rule will stop the cat video unloaders, due to their unquenchable thirst for putting videos of cats on the Internet.  They will just invent code words for cat to avoid the video from being flagged.

Why not market next years model of video cameras on their usefulness towards cat videos?  That's all video cameras are ever really used for anyway.  "This model here works well for young cats.  It has a very fast shutter enabling you catch your cat in full-sprint running up the stairs without getting any motion blur.  This particular model works great Persian whites.  The contrast level is specifically suited for the snow white color tone.  This model is perfect for black cats.  Unlike the previous model, this one pulls the contrast back and increases the brightness, enabling you see your cat even in low light situations.  This allows you to film your cat at night when it's most active."  They would make a fortune.

I have thrown my hat into the ring and have started up a cats-only videographer company.  Basically, I show up with a camera and videotape your cat.  Then I post the video directly on to YouTube.  So far, I've upload a five-minute video called "cat sleeping" and another five-minute gem called "cat napping".  They weren't paying gigs but I'm hoping that the free promotion will parlay itself into dollars soon.

Oil Light

Can you imagine installing a fire detector that only turns on after your house has burned down?  Or a home alarm that alerts you to the intrusion once a burglar leaves your house?  You know what would be really handy?  A reading light that would only turn on during the day.  Better yet, a traffic light that did not let you know what colour it was until after you passed through the intersection.  They really need to come out with something that informs you after the fact that the engine in your car has been wrecked.  Oh wait, that one already exists!  It's called the low oil light.  


Somehow, my car expects me to have my seat belt on immediatly after opening the door.  It will give me a stern talking to if I leave the lights on after taking the key out of the ignition.  Countless hours have been spent by some dummy, inventing those irritating locks that automatically unlock themselves if you don't hold the handle up while you close the door.  But who thought up the oil gauge?  It works by letting you know that your oil pressure is to low to safely drive your car without damaging the engine.   To warn you of the impending end of the car's usefulness as a method of transportation, a picture of a boat that has some water dripping off the front appears followed by a pleasant intermittent ding. 


By the time the oil pressure gauge light comes on, it's already too late.  Why not give the driver a bit of warning so that you can pull over, and save your engine, before losing total oil pressure?  Then, install a real warning system once it hits the danger zone.  The car should disable the stereo controls and start blasting "MMMBop" by Hanson, thereby forcing you to pull over and turn the car off simply to make it stop.  Unless of course, you're a burglar and the idea of an alarm that only turns on after you've left the house is very appealing.

VHS, DVD, HDTV and Blu-ray

When DVDs first came out, there would be an ad just before the preview promoting the great new technology of the digital video disc.  It would have a great looking picture on half of the screen and then this totally blurry picture on the other side.  Of course, the ad was captioned "DVD" on the clear side and "VHS" on the blurry side for obvious comparison.  I remember thinking, "Wow, that DVD picture looks great!  It's too bad I don't own a DVD a player and I have to watch this movie on my blurry-looking VHS."

This ad was obviously placed toward stupid people like myself, who weren't smart enough to realize that we were watching the amazing picture and sound of the DVD on a VHS tape.  I'm pretty sure that somebody was messing around in the editing suite with a new "blurry filter" plug-in he just got and applied the effect to half the screen while leaving the over half unaffected.  As a joke he wrote DVD on the normal half and VHS on the blurry half.  Just then, his boss came in but he wasn't quick enough to switch the screen back to the project they were supposed to be working on.

After a stunningly successful campaign, the big brains realized that nobody was wise to their advertising trickery.  So when HD TVs came out, they brought the same thing into the big box store.  Half the screen is blurrier than bigfoot and the other half's showing stunning coastlines from a helicopter.  Still, I can't believe that I watch that blurry mess at home.  The sign says "High Definition" vs "Standard Definition" and I have standard definition at home so that must be how my TV looks.  "It's funny how I never noticed it before," I remember thinking as a carried my new TV out of the store.

I just rented a DVD, and you guessed it...  There was a commercial before the previews that split my TV in half.  One side showed me the crappy picture that I watch all my DVDs on and the other side showed a brilliant looking picture that I could see only if I buy a Blu-ray player.  It saddened me to think that I was going to have to watch the movie on crappy DVD.  Why not just keep watching movies on DVD?  Because Blu-ray looks so much better - I saw it with my own eyes on the last DVD I rented.

Post Card

The following was my attempt to make my Grandpa Lamb think that I had gone crazy.  I've been living in New Zealand for the past 10 months (moved from Canada) so I wrote him a postcard trying to talk as much Kiwi slang as possible.

Giday Mate!  It's spring here which means there are heaps of fresh fruit and vege.  The kumara and passion fruit are especially choice.  Driving over here can be a bit dodgy on the metal roads.  It's good as if you can stay off the footpaths.  We pay the rent for our flat every fortnight instead of monthly.  The scenery is great especially up in the wop-wops.  Just be sure to pack some hokey pokey in the chilly bin if your going on a tramp.  It makes a great snack with a couple of bangers fresh off the barbie.  Our car got stolen by a hoon right in front of the bach.  It was just a bog-standard with not many horses under the bonnet and no gold in the boot.  I got to go take out the rubbish without a whinge.  Love you heaps.  Cheers.

Shoes

Adults didn't play video games when I was a kid. Video games were a toy and once you reached a certain age you would move onto more important things... like watching tv, doing puzzles and trying to remember that persons name who used to live down the street.

Video games were released on a schedule revolving around the winter and summer olympics. If you didn't like the game that had just come out you had to wait two years until the next one came out or get back in line for "Pong". To my parents a video arcade game as they called them was something you did until the shuffle table was free or as a warm up for bumper pool. If you have a spare hour I dare you to ask my dad about the time the pinball machine was broken and he was forced to play "Night Driver".

All of this to say I've started to see an alarming number of kids wearing roller shoes. They are actual shoes with wheels on them that parents give their kids to make them think walking is now fun. Getting grocery's, taking out the garbage, mowing the lawn, going inside the Burger King because drive thru line was too long are all jobs now being done by kids wearing roller shoes. They are everywhere. I wonder if these kids will grow up and keep wearing their roller shoe's the way adults now play video games. Eventually people won't remember how to walk, which really isn't very different from how I still can't remember the guy's name who used to live down the street.

Umbrella

Rain has a very good friend called wind with which it almost always travels. Wind presents two major problems when it comes to the umbrella. The first being that you still get wet because rain doesn't travel straight down, contrary to its appearance in comic books. The other problem is that the wind gusts will actually cause you to stumble around, giving the appearance of intoxication. So now you are tottering around with a flying projectile that has a sharp pointy tip.

If, by some random chance, you make it to your destination not having:

A. Been propelled by your umbrella into oncoming traffic.
B. Poked out an old lady's eye who was waiting for the bus.
C. Had it do the inside out thing that all umbrella's like to do.
D. Been voted off the street because your taking up more room than the guy who's walking three dogs at the same time.

Now that you have made it to your destination you must stand outside in the rain and make the judgment call of whether the umbrella will actually fit through the door. If it's a single door, then you will never fit your umbrella through without tilting it on an angle causing water to drip all over you. Now if it's a double door, the proceedings will inevitably look like a scene from an old silent movie.

Defying all odds, you have gotten into a building without getting wet using an umbrella. All you have to do is put it away. Have you ever closed an umbrella that's still over your head? All that water that you have been keeping off your body gets released onto you from some hidden reservoir built into the top of all umbrella's. There's a trick that I have seen done by holding the umbrella away from you with outstretched arms and close it with the tip pointing towards the ground. These are the people that I call professional umbrella users. Wanting to be like the professionals, I tried that same technique only to have the umbrella jam, causing an involuntary reflex to bring the umbrella over my head again to inspect the malfunction. After closing the hinge, the umbrella proceeded to close swiftly over my head followed by an indoor rainfall, defeating the whole purpose of using such a terrible contraption.

Why not just leave the umbrella at home? Trust me on this one, I always do.