snl the funny???

a post on fark today - actually two posts - consecutive ones to boot, directing others to a very funny clip from last night's saturday night live. this is news as snl has not produced anything remotely close to funny since the days of happy fun ball and toonces...

andy samberg's 'iran so far'
check out the cameos - also, the nbc feed of the clip has better resolution but the sound is a tad muted and it's hard to tell the lyrics...

also saw the second simpsons of the season - it reminded me of a repeat i saw the other day of one of my favs - when bart is given a restraining order from lisa and gary busey explains what will happen within the household. just thinking of the clip makes me giggle like mahmood...

gary busey's restraining order clip

surplus anyone?

so canada's surplus for the past year was a tidy 13.8 billion... a bit higher than what was estimated (by, um, 4.6 billion... chump change really...). ctv's report fails to mention the previous estimates (surprise, surprise...) and is almost gushing it its praise for harper and his gang. however, an interesting bit is that ctv allows comments on articles and the peanut gallery appears almost evenly split amongst those who say, 'kudos, hooray!' and those who say, 'damn hypocrites, when martin/chretien brought in massive surpluses they were thieves' or 'the surpluses are all thanks to martin's prudence, blah, blah, blah...'.

cell issues

so for the past bit, ever since i changed my cell number to a local ottawa number, i've been receiving text messages for someone named sarah. now, i'm not well-versed in how texting works so i didn't (and still, largely don't) know how to contact the person and let them know that i'm not the person they're trying to contact.

i've tried replying to the texts i've received but they're coming from windows live messenger and therefore i'm not sending them directly to the person but to their email account. the people i have been able to contact, as well, have not responded so i'm not really sure what's going on.

what i've been able to gleam, without really digging too much (cause i could just forward all the messages to my email account...) is that the person's name is sarah and that she used to date a guy but they recently split up (his last email to her had the subject line: don't be a child). the ex has some sort of relationship now with lyndsey who just happens to be sarah's best friend. sarah told lyndsey to have relations with the ex while at the airport (i think she went to africa - many of the text messages are titled re: africa) - btw, relations is my word... the ex uses a less sensitive word...

the ex uses the word 'whack' in sentences like the following... "i most likey wont even see her anyway, but if she or i want see each other we should not have to ask your permission or some whack thing like that..."

another text message (that i didn't read) was titled 'your wife...' which adds to the mystery.

i'll post more about this person when i can (i don't have my cell on my at the moment...).

btw... the ex (who doesn't list his name in the email...) signs off on with 'laters'

other mottos

ok so i looked up the national (and some provincial) mottos (there's a wiki page!) and cobbled together a list of some of my favs...

Aruba - One Happy Island
Azerbaijan: Bir kere yukselen bayraq, bir daha enmez! (The flag once raised will never fall!)
Belize: Sub umbra floreo (Latin, Under the shade I flourish)
Grenada: Ever Conscious of God We Aspire, and Advance as One People
Kenya: Harambee (Swahili, Let's work together)
Luxembourg: Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn (Luxembourgish, We wish to remain what we are)
Scotland: Nemo me impune lacessit (Latin, No one provokes me with impunity)

british motto

apparently britain is jonesing for a motto as they're jealous of those of other countries in the world. i think i'll look some of those up in a second... but first i'd like to present a few that were suggested on the bbc magazine site as they are brilliant (or stupid, but mostly brilliant).

'Britain - all it needs is a coat of paint'.
"With honour, with justice, with chips"
"Togetherness though diversity; Unity through variety"
Is it still raining?
Musn't grumble
Britain: Good old-fashioned newness
Briefly Creative.
"Queue Properly"

hate on for bell

ok, so another bell episode today...

my mail had not been forwarded from birch st. (surprise, surprise) so my last few bills were not reaching me. not a big deal as i'm set up for direct withdrawal but it meant that i didn't know that i was being fleeced from the get go with my 'plan'.

a couple of weeks ago i called to change my number over to an ottawa local number and talked to some guy who asked me who i worked for. for the third time i told him that it was queen's (i didn't want to get into the whole mess about who i did and didn't work for and for how long etc). he said that on the computer i work for canadian tire - to which i said, 'yeah, that's what it says but i've never worked for crappy tire - i don't know why they put this on my account'. well, he says that it doesn't matter cause it's a good deal and i should stick with it. i said 'ok'.

this was the umpteenth time i've called bell over the past year - the first was useless. i talked to a cheery east-coaster about my plan and she was totally lost... wanted to know why i hadn't signed up for a bundle plan (i had - canadian tire) and didn't seem to know why my payments at the time weren't being received.

other calls were also pointless - the most recent boondoggle being that they didn't show up when they said they would to install the phone line, but showed up 2 hours later and then complained that we weren't there and told primus that we didn't have a phone connection with them (during which time we received calls for the service store around the corner - two houses away!).

today was also funny. going over my contract i notice that my long distance for the past month was $12. i'm supposed to have a 7 cent/minute plan so this means that i've been screwed over as they were charging me 40cents/minute... and... they've been doing this since day one! despite my calls to bell about my account they hadn't changed anything...

so i phone them up - they're experiencing a higher volume of calls than normal (when are they experiencing normal volume?). then i talk to this guy - richard, who says 'is it your husband's account?'

yeah... so i'm like seething but think, well, the guy's heard three words out of my mouth so far so perhaps he'll clue in... so i say 'no... it's my account' to which he says, under his breath, 'there's only a man's name on this account'.

um, hello? perhaps richard, who barely managed to spit out three words in a row in thick french accent (which does mean he's not indian at least...).

once i told him my name he didn't apologize or anything - didn't change his tone at all and right away acknowledged that my account had been set up wrong (for starters), shouldn't have been made out to canadian tire (you think?) and that, yes, i shouldn't have been charged for the long distance charges. so, he changes the last 90 days of my account (a policy - they can't do more) and tells me that i must change my plan. this might be a good thing though... christine is looking at getting a cell and we could get a family plan (of course we had thought of ditching bell altogether...).

so richard is emailing me some potential alternative plans. he did look up queen's corporate plans but got confused cause there were two (and, coincidentally, if you sign up for a multi-year plan and change jobs, or they ask you who you work for and it's not the one on the contract, you have to change your plan... um... i'll have to look into the contract to see how that works...).

btw - a quick peek at the bell plans leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth...

p4w now in queen's' hands...

queen's and the whig are both reporting on the final sale of the entire p4w grounds (8 acres) to queen's for a tidy sum of somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5 million.

btw - the whig has a new site design that ranks up there with some of the oddest reconfigurations i can remember... it's pretty ugly. it would appear that they are trying to do away with most of the images on the site and work in javascript and css in its stead. the good thing is that the number of articles available has jumped considerably. i would nix the sky blue colour scheme (ugh!) and perhaps try out some more imaginative fonts... you also need a map and gps system to find the whig logo (about two inches down, on the left).

anyway... in other news the city finally released the newest newsletter on the lvec (a full month late i might add). the 'monthly newsletter' skipped august it would seem although it sure makes up for lost time by providing such riveting info as the fact that the noise from concerts in the surrounding area would be 5 decibels less than expected as "This reduction was achieved as a result of including the lower roof wall, which was not fully designed when the original concert modelling was completed."

so... that means that the lower roof wall has been redesigned... interesting. i guess we'll have to wait until it's finished to see what that means. as of yet we're still operating on the 90% plans that were tabled over a year ago - no new plans have been released.

the webcam of the site does show that the bubble wrap top is now in place and much of the sides are quickly resembling, well, sides.

i will hopefully be getting internet soon (primus contacted bell on the day that we were supposed to be hooked up and bell said that we weren't hooked up (they showed up 2 hours late anyway - but we were hooked up, only to a phone line around the corner) and so they canceled our connection... no, they didn't phone and ask us anything). oh, and primus phoned last night to tell us that they were connecting things next week... but the message was only in french. gah! i phoned the number and asked the woman who answered (and was ticked that I wanted english on the french line) to hear the message in english and she said no... she couldn't do that, and besides, i wasn't on the account anyway. i hung up on her.