Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Tuesday Funny Stuff

Here are some funny things I learned about today:



Also check out this link to K&K Mime.

And just when you thought it was a joke:


When I was a kid... or to sound even more old-man-like: Back in the good old days - when you could go to the corner store without worrying about getting hit by a bunch of global warmnings (warming & warnings) and a candy bar only cost a handful of nickels - things were hard enough: I always had trouble not laughing my head off in church when someone would sing the wrong line in a hymn or when they would ring one of those tiny bells right before communion. I feel sorry for all those kids of this generation. How are they supposed to act all solemn and churchy with a ridiculous clowns all over the place. Not that I think clowns are at all funny. I never laughed at a clown in my life. But I think that if you put a clown/mime in a church or any place of worship and have them dancing up and down it up all crazy-like, I would have no choice but to give into the hilarity and loose both my mind and control of my bladder. Good luck children of the new millennium, may your giant mime overlord take pity on your tiny souls.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 3

Halfway through Day 2 of Mesh09 and I just got served the same dish I fed you all a few days ago. Looks like Karma doesn't have the same food temperature policy as revenge. This time I warn you: watching this video is a mild form of Rick Rolling.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 2

Day 1 of the Mesh Conference 2009 is now over... Food was great, but I didn't take any pictures of the food cause my "Mike Cooks Meat" contract clearly states that although I don't actually cook the meat to be allowed to blog about it, I still need to be able to cook it. This food however was beyond my abilities at this point. But can you blame me!? I'M JUST A HUMAN BOY!!! I would recommend the caterer... I WOULD recommend the caterer, but I don't know who it was, so instead I will recommend some of my favorite music from my early high-school days. Particularly music by the band Moist. Whose lead singer was David Usher who happens to be a speaker here at Mesh Conference yet again.

I got a couple of shots of David seen here talking about something impressive I'm sure... but unfortunately I completely missed the beginning of this session, the the middle (taking these magnificent pictures) and the end (I was setting up my laptop to download them). Why am I at the conference again? Doesn't matter. I'm too busy reliving old memories while listening to the Moist song "Leave it alone" in the video above... which I think may just be a mashup of some Jake Gyllenhaal movie. Could this be the real video? I don't remember if this song even had a video. I wish I had a vast quantity of trivial information at my fingertips that I could tap into to gain such fulfilling knowledge. Here is David on stage with Mesh Founder Mark Evans.

So I do admit that I was late for class and although I don't have a note, I do have an excuse. I was busy time-vampiring keynote speaker and co-founder of Kiva (which I blogged about a couple time... s... and once again for blog action day) Jessica Jackley who - I recently learned - shared a mutual friend with me: the high priest of personal inspiration and life purpose Jullien Gordon, whose blog-link regularly hangs out in trendy spots (see the bottom of this page). Jessica can be seen in the picture below answering questions from an inquisitive audience member.

The inquisitive audience member (who experts in the audience-member industry commonly refer to as Allan Isfan founder of FaveQuest) can be seen even further below.

That's all for today.

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 1

The Mesh Conference is about to start. I hope I don't get any food poisoning this year. Note to self... avoid mysterious Thai Food restaurants in questionable neighborhoods :(

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Family Ties meets Sauve Scholarship

In life there are very few degrees of separation between people (or Kevin Bacon). The key is being aware of the relationships between people in some qualitative or quantitative way. Humans can only keep track of so many of this connections and relationships before they losing their meaning. In the book "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" (which can bee seen at the top of this page ... I have recommended it), Malcolm Gladwell explains how 150 people seems to be the maximum number of people who can maintain a community where everyone can keep track not only of everyone else, but also all the relationships between everyone. This was fascinating to me when I first read the book and I bring it up now only as an interesting segue to my real topic. You see one of my recent posts was a tribute to Alex Keaton, a character from a TV show I used to watch called Family Ties. Another post was one about the Jeanne Sauve Scholarship of which I am a finalist. Tonight I found out that there is a link between the two entries (besides both being on my blog). I found out that there are actually pretty close "Family Ties" between Jeanne Sauve and I. She was my grandfather's (the only one I ever knew) 2nd cousin. Making Jeanne Sauve my second cousin twice removed! Sounds far off? Perhaps it is: it basically means that her great grandparents were my great, great, great grandparents. However I just found out that she and my grandpa were very close as kids. Is that not ridiculous? Plus everyone in my family seemed to know about this but me! And I'm the one trying to apply for this scholarship! There is usually an element of disclosure involved. So here I am... disclosing. I am not supposed to contact them directly so instead I hereby make it public knowledge that I am related to Jeanne Sauve but was not aware of it at the time of my application and therefore included no indication of it in the application. Now I can sleep in good conscience.
As a conclusion, the universe (or Multiverse for all you quantum physicists out there) is a complex place full of unseen links and relationships. Be aware of them and you can experience things on different levels.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Mike Cooks Meat - Part 2 : Charlie's Chicken Factory

Todays lunch meat was something I randomly decided to call "Charlie's Chicken" on behalf of nothing in particular. It was pretty good. Below it can be seen in it's natural habitat beside some broiled rosemary potatoes, red leaf lettuce and some non meat related items.

NB: I figure that potatoes are considered a distant cousin of the meat family as they (according to my negligible understanding of Darwin's theories) must have evolved from some very tasty rodents who buried themselves underground to escape the fire breathing robot turkeys (I'll teach you how they are related to the escargot family some other time). While underground, these starchy rodents and lost the use of their many, many eyes because of high toxicity soil levels cause by the Triassic Dinosaur's 3nd industrial revolution. Without their vision they tended to get disoriented and remained below the surface of the earth. Years went by till about 5000 years ago or so God came along and declared these mostly potato-based rodents "created" to appease the creationists who he would later create as an April fools prank against the Buddhists. I hope I haven't offended too many people with my lunch/history enlightening moment, because I can't afford any more arson attempts from the Knights of the Robot Turkey Templar. They are ruthless towards anyone who reveals their secrets. Only Seth Green and his thinly veiled "Robot Chicken" really know my pain.


















Enjoy your chicken and beware the metal ones!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Welcome Home Tribute

As part of my "Welcome Home" package. I just received this "Welcome Home Mike" Video:



Please watch it.

Now after watching it you are more confused than anything then you should:
1) spend more time on the internet
2) read this explanation

Consider yourself baptized.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Mike Cooks Meat - Part 1: Randolf Salmon in Canada

Welcome back me! I'm back in Canada now; for all those who have been living under a Canadian Shield. BTW, does the shield still exist and has it begun filing for bankruptcy protection yet? I've been away quite a while, not sure what to expect.

Anyway, as I have the liberty of eating at home I have chosen to eat foods fit for only the 5 awesomest re-integrating Canadians in Ottawa. This unique set of circumstances will give way to Mike Cooks Meat. MCM is an ongoing, multi-part, online tribute to Steve Carell & The Daily Show's "Produce Pete" which used to be the center of my culinary/comedy universe.

On today's menu was my latest creation which I will call Randolf. Randolf is a Pan fried salmon steak. You can serve it with or without a side of patriotism. I personally serve my Randolf with a portion of unemployment and a dash of "where the hell is the sun? I want to go back to my southern paradise".

Here is a view of today's Randolf lunch:


And this is an artists rendition of what my Randolf may have looked like only seconds after I released my appetite at it.

No Randolf's where actually harmed in the creation of this rendition. Well, maybe one Randolf. Ok, I gobbled the F*&%ing thing... are you happy!? I stalked it like a social insurance recipient stalks the mailman. Then I pounced like hobo onto a moving freight train filled with restaurant garbage in easy tie glad bags. It was a glorious meal. In a rating system based on a scale of an undisclosed number of stars, I give it 3 1/2 thumbs up. I don't much like being boxed into closed paradigm rating systems anyway.

Recipe available upon commented request.