Category: zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Read this if you like Dave Barry, Monty Python and The Princess Bride

Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Toilet Seat Lore v.2

Posted on by George Gillson

This post is a revision of the original which appeared on September 24, 2015. I’m replaying some of the older posts because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to display the posts in folders by year which would make it much easier for people to browse. As it is, there’s a list of about 115 posts in chronological order. Nobody bothers diving down to the bottom of the literary swamp. Anyway, here goes:

Well, it looks like I’m cranking these things out somewhat less often than I’d like to but echoing the immortal words of John Cusack explaining to his prof why he was late to class in the cult movie: The Sure Thing (1985): “Well you see there was this problem and I’m late because of it.”

The problem is that a few weeks ago we woke up one morning and decided to adopt a seven-year-old border collie named Mickey. Everything you read about border collies says they need to have a job, so Mickey’s job is to play fetch 23 hours a day and look at me reproachfully the rest of the time.

So, between Mickey and the treadmill, there’s not a lot of spare time these days. Plus, I didn’t have anything worth writing about until last week when we had visitors from LifeLabs head office, aka The Mothership. (LifeLabs bought my lab in 2013 but kept me on as Medical Director until 2023, for some reason.)

OK, where was I? Yes!

For the sake of argument, I’ll call refer to one of the visitors from The Mothership as: “Lisa Kearns” (not her real name).

“Lisa” was telling one of the people with whom I share an office what a great stay she had had in the Hotel Elan (otherwise known as the Hotel Elan): “a unique, business-friendly boutique hotel in Calgary, located uptown just off vibrant 17th Avenue SW.”

hotel-elanI wasn’t sure what a boutique hotel was so I Googled it.

A boutique hotel is: “a small stylish hotel, typically situated in a fashionable urban location.”

I read a few more Google results and found a pearl of wisdom from Kobrun Vidisdottir, of Reykjavík, Iceland.

According to Kobrun, a boutique hotel is: “an accommodation that makes their guests feel happy and contented while staying there, makes them feel extraordinary, makes them to realize that they should revert soon and makes them to recognize that this hotel is worth discussing with others.”

 

I followed most of what Kobrun was trying to say but I got stuck at the part where she started talking about reverting. Reverting to what? Her maiden name? Windows 7? Human form? Then I figured out she meant return soon.

That reminds me! I should return to the theme of this post, which is supposed to be about toilet seats. Therefore, I will now commence talking about them. Just don’t forget to remind me to tell you a little bit more about Reykjavík before I sign off.

Our visitor, “Lisa”, was going on about the heated and lighted toilet seat in her hotel room, which in her words, “changed my life.” I asked her if her life routinely involved sitting on ice-cold toilet seats and she said no, the heated seat was just a particularly pleasant experience. The underside of the seat was festooned with blue LED lights which, apparently, were also pleasant.

Now this is important because everyone knows that if you wake up in the middle of the night and turn on a yellow or orange light, it will immediately shut down your melatonin. Everyone also knows that the last thing you want to do is sit on an ice-cold toilet seat and shut down your melatonin when all you really want to do is take a pee and go back to sleep. But I guess it’s this kind of thing that separates a normal hotel from a boutique hotel. I think it’s still sort of surreal though, like going to the bathroom in 2176 AD.

Speaking of going to the bathroom in 2176 AD, Calgary happens to have a few choice, futuristic, public washrooms (FPWs) strategically located around the city. I had the chance to use one a few years ago but to refresh my memory about it, before I started writing this post, I paid a visit to an FPW near my house, at the Tuscany LRT station. (My house is not at the Tuscany LRT station; the FPW is at the Tuscany LRT station.)

toilets-1

For starters, the FPW was pretty futuristic-looking. You approach the door, push a button, the door slides open and you find yourself in a little room with a lot of stainless steel including a stainless-steel toilet, with no toilet seat.

first-button

You push another button (“Toilet Seat”) which triggers a bunch of disturbing mechanical noises. A panel in the wall slides open and a toilet seat deploys from behind the panel, spraying liquid in the process. (I am not making any of this up.) You half-expect that some robot arms with metallic claws will appear, seize your eyelids and pry them open, like in “A Clockwork Orange.” A mellifluous robotic voice guides you through the whole process, accompanied by a stirring rendition of “The Ride of the Valkryies.” (Kidding.)

second-buttonYou go to into the FPW and happily, if you can’t figure out how to flush, there are instructions to help. Once you wash your hands, the toilet seat folds back into its nook, the panel slides back down and you’re good to go. (I thought you just went.)

third-button

But say you’re still sitting down or just remaining immobile for some reason: shock probably. The mellifluous robotic voice comes back on and tells you that you have about 20 seconds until the cubicle door opens, unless you start moving around soon. If you don’t move around fast enough, the voice starts counting down. Seriously.

I actually filmed the whole thing and you can check it out here:

(Futuristic Public Washroom video clip)

My son Ty got quite panicky in an FPW once, when the mellifluous robotic voice announced the countdown while he was still working on going #2 or whatever. Maybe it was #2.6. I dunno. Anyway, Ty lept up from his perch and began waving his arms madly, gaining the precious seconds he needed to finish his business.

The whole setup is just so weird that I fully expected to emerge from that washroom to find myself catapulted two or three centuries past 2176 AD and coming face to face with a Dalek or else “Robot” from Lost in Space. “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

verdarobbyFor the heck of it, I started looking at high-end toilets and found one which automatically deploys a menacing-looking probe from somewhere in the bowels (pun intended) of the toilet bowl. The probe emits a gentle spray of water which you direct with a complicated remote control. Since I can barely use my TV remote, I probably won’t buy one of those probing/spraying commodes, even if I could afford one. I’m saving up for a time machine.

Last but not least, if you happen to have to go potty in O’Hare Airport in Chicago, brace yourself. When you’re in the cubicle, you press a button on an apparatus situated on the back of the toilet. You hear mechanical noises and then a protective plastic sleeve shoots out and telescopes around the toilet seat.

You do what you went in for, then get up. After more mechanical whirring noises, the sleeve retracts back into the apparatus behind the toilet seat.

My only question is: what happens to the sleeve you sat on? Is it discarded or is it sent back around for the next unsuspecting victim? I know, I probably shouldn’t worry about these things but I can’t help feeling that life is getting way too complicated here in 2015.

Maybe I should just move to Reykjavík even though there are a shitload of consonants in Iceland. Quoting now from Randburg.com (whatever that is) about the downtown area: “The old city center is atmospheric and relaxed. Many excellent cafes, bars and restaurants are located there and there are also many shops, including stores specializing in traditional souvenirs and stocking a good selection of merchandise, including crafts, Viking spears, ceramics, jewelry, toilet paper, playing cards, books, golf tees, calendars, Avaxtskyr cheese, sheepskin products and Iceland’s famous woolen underwear. “

Sounds great. I’m fresh out of Viking artifacts, so I’ll definitely check Reykjavík out.  But I bet the toilet seats are freezing in Iceland.

Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Continental Incontinence

Posted on by George Gillson

The other day I was leafing through the latest edition of Plate Tectonics magazine when I came across an interesting article.

Alert readers know that Plate Tectonics is not about dinnerware.

Plate Tectonics is the branch of science that concerns “the structure of the Earth’s crust and many associated phenomena resulting from the interaction of rigid lithospheric plates which move slowly over the underlying mantle, minding their own business most of the time, voting in favor of fiscal responsibility and fewer pronouns, when need arises, and occasionally crashing into each other, causing earthquakes, eruption of deep sea hydrothermal vents and last but not least, toilet paper shortages.”

Actually, I’m lying. First of all, there is no “Plate Tectonics” magazine. If there was, no one would read it. There’s a lot of stuff going on down below the Earth’s surface but most of it is happening extremely slowly. Reading a magazine devoted to Plate Tectonics would be like reading a magazine devoted to what you can learn by watching your toenails grow.

to find out what else i’m lying about, keep reading
Posted in Boltzmann, Clausius-Clapeyron Equation, Statistical Mechanics, zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Entropy, Cosmic Inflation, String Theory and other topics

Posted on by George Gillson

Things have been pretty busy here in The Department Of Teetering On The Edge Of Sanity For The Last Three Months Whilst Preparing A Complicated Biochem Talk That Took Every Spare Minute Of My Free Time And Practically Drove Me Bonkers.

(Jeanette, my better half, wasn’t all that stoked about it either.)

I finished the talk yesterday. Thank Heaven. Between the greeting card montages and the Biochem talk, you now realize why I haven’t been posting consistently these last few months. I hereby offer a proactive apology for this longish post.

Scientific inquiry can be hazardous. According to noted ancient sheep-herder and philosopher, Aristotle: “There is no great genius without a touch of madness.”

Take Ludwig Boltzmann for example. Boltzmann developed the dense forest of equations that founded the branch of Physics known as Statistical Mechanics. Here are a few of the trees from that forest:

These are very similar to the equations used by the IRS and the CRA to calculate the probability that the CRA, or worse yet the IRS, will audit you this year

The reason I know about Boltzmann’s fate is because a friend of mine whom I’ll call “Bob”, being the helpful soul that he is, sent me a meme a couple of days before I finished the Biochem talk. Bob knew that my foray into the depths of Biochemistry was driving me bat-shit crazy, not to put too fine a point on it.

This is part of the meme:

Boltzmann is one of these two intense-looking fellows. The probability that Boltzmann is the fellow on the right is exactly 50%. Boltzmann died in 1906, at the age of 62.

The other guy in the photo is Rudolf Clausius who recasted the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, building on Boltzmann’s work. He also invented the game of Clue AND the Clausius Clapeyron equation, which we all knew and loved back in our High School Chemistry days. Clausius died in 1888 after a lingering illness. Coincidentally, the probability that he is the fellow on the left photo is also exactly 50%.

Statistics is full of surprises.

Surely not everybody loved the Clausius Clapeyron equation-along with Kung-Fu fighting

The other part of the meme was lifted out of the introduction section in the book: States of Matter written by former Physics/Applied Physics Professor David Goodstein. Dr. Goodstein passed away peacefully in April 2024 at the age of 85. He earned many accolades and wrote many papers: he was well-respected and well-loved.

Here’s the book and the introduction:

Per the last sentence, I forgot to mention that Goodstein also had a penchant for understatement.

So here we have four brilliant scientists who were deep in the weeds of fundamental physics. Two died peacefully and the other two took their own lives. Looks like Aristotle’s assessment was on target, or as the Greeks would say: “στο στόχο”.

(I forgot to mention that in addition to card montages and Biochem talks, I’ve been learning Greek for the last year or so.)

Note: Boltzmann and Ehrenfest were suffering from Bipolar Affective Disorder (BPA). BPA engenders wildly creative out-of-the-box thinking necessary for breaking new ground in any scientific endeavor but brings with it bouts of crippling depression. BPA is a devastating illness and I am in no way belittling people who suffer from it. My point is that unrelenting attempts to understand and codify the Universe can take their toll. There are things we just aren’t meant to understand, no matter how hard we try.

Moving right along here, and to lighten things up, I need to point out that even though Physics has an undeserved reputation as being too inaccessible and arcane, it’s still relevant for Earthlings.

For example, Statistical Mechanics, a branch of Physics, can deal with difficult questions such as, “What is the probability that you will bump into your wife in the kitchen when she doesn’t want you to be there?”

Then there’s this Physics/Cosmology theory called Inflation which posits that the Universe, starting from an infinitesimally-small point, expanded in diameter by a factor of 1026 and in volume by a factor of 1078. Supposedly it only took 10-32 seconds.

This is very relevant to daily living because 10-32 seconds is roughly the time it takes for an initial estimate of the cost of a kitchen reno to cosmically inflate to what you will ultimately be paying. (It’s also comparable to the time it takes for newly-elected Calgary City Councillors to vote themselves large raises. Not that I’m bitter.)

This leaves us with Entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and String Theory. The Second Law basically says that, left to itself, the mess on your desktop will spontaneously go from bad to worse. (Increased Entropy.)

String Theory postulates that many elementary particles consist of tiny vibrating strings that are even smaller than the screws that hold the arms on to your glasses: or maybe smaller than the little filaments inside the Flintstones-era incandescent Christmas tree light bulb strings.

Here’s a real-world example of Entropy and String Theory:

It’s early in January. You finally get around to packing up your old pre-lit Christmas tree. Every light bulb works fine. Fast-forward to December. You take the three tree segments out of the box and plug in the base segment. It lights up just dandy. Then you socket the middle segment to the base and this is what you get:

Then you socket the apex segment into the middle segment and again, this is what you get:

Now you have a small black hole, spanning two tree segments, lurking right there in your living room !!

Clearly, things spontaneously went from bad to worse while the light filaments were minding their own business inside their box for eleven months. Damn that Second Law!

My best guess is that the tiny elementary particles inside the bulb filaments actually ARE vibrating strings. They vibrated so much that the the filaments broke apart while nobody was watching.

Being an inveterate tinker-arounder with electricity and electronics since the age of 12 and also possessing medical expertise – or at least having done Surgical Rotations in Clerkship and Internship – you set to work mapping the wiring diagram and discover that there are two dead fifty-bulb loops inside the black hole.

Clearly, you have an Electrosurgical Emergency on your hands.

You carefully unwrap the dead loops from the tree but don’t excise them. Yet. Now you’re faced with the artificial Christmas tree version of two infarcted loops of small intestine right in your living room.

You prepare the surgical field, being careful to also mark the excision sites with colored tape. After all, nobody wants to put a new hip joint in somebody’s right hip when the left hip is the one with the problem.

Now you excise the offending loops, find the offending bulbs, replace them, temporarily wire the loops back into the tree’s nervous system with clip leads, lay the loop(s) on the sofa for testing, remove the clip leads, cauterize the splices then re-wrap the loops back amongst the branches.

Voila!

See.

Physics isn’t so bad after all.

Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

What Bees Do When They’re Not Busy

Posted on by George Gillson

This morning I was fulfilling my duties as the Director of the Arbour Lake Department of Bernese Mountain Dogs, minding my own business and taking my Berner, Sarge, for an emptying, when I encountered someone who had a container hanging on a strap around their neck. The container featured air vents and a clear plastic half-dome windshield. I thought it might have been a re-entry pod or something space-related. From a distance I could see a passenger moving inside and I thought maybe it was a ferret or possibly a stoat. Turns out it was neither.

to find out what was in the pod, keep reading
Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Cheese Debate Gone Wrong

Posted on by George Gillson

I’m pretty sure that you don’t care, but I’m about three weeks overdue in writing this post. Instead of wasting time thinking up an intro line such as: “Here in the Department of Thinking About How to Defend Yourself From An Attacker Armed With A Banana…” or “Here in the the Department Of Never Knowing When It’s A Good Time To Switch Back To Summer Tires Because It’s Been Known To Snow Every Day Of The Year Here In Alberta…”, I’m just going to dive in.

DON’Tread more if you don’t want to. Go swap out your snow tires instead. (unless you live in Florida)
Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Calico Critters,etc.

Posted on by George Gillson

Warning: Long intro alert!

I went with my daughter last week, to a pretty excellent toy store called Monkey Mountain, conveniently located in the town of Okotoks, Alberta. One of the other things that contribute to the general excellentness of Okotoks is the imaginatively-named Big Rock, a glacial erratic boulder sitting in a field west of Okotoks. The Big Rock is conveniently located near the foothills of the Canadian Rockies.

Big Rock, sitting in a field wishing that it had a cooler name but at the same time pretty stoked that it has such a great view of the Rocky Mountain foothills (in background)

But that’s not my point. My point is that my daughter and I both got a little giddy marveling at the vast cornucopia of toys in that store, including the usual suspects such as Lego, Playmobil, cat-sized shark oufits (after all, who doesn’t want to dress their cat in a shark outfit?), cont…

…Roombas (after all, who doesn’t want to plop their cat on a Roomba after it (the cat) has been clothed in a shark outfit?), cont…

Intrepid cat accompanied by its friend, Nestor

…miniature particle accelerator kits, dredging equipment, fiendishly-complex, dinky DIY dollhouse room kits and so forth.

Fiendishly-complex, dinky DIY Rolife Cozy Kitchen dollhouse room kit

Shark-themed cat outfits aside, it was the Calico Critters that really caught my eye and accordingly, I felt like I should bring alert readers up to speed. If you like fiendishly-dinky DIY dollhouse room kits you will love the Calico Critters.

Note that the Calico Critters is not a new type of infectious disease. Or a country music band.

to find out what the calico critters are, keep reading
Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

How Not To Make Coffee

Posted on by George Gillson

The Department of Stringing Random Topics Together in One Post has its work cut out for it today because it has to weave the following topics into a coherent narrative: ways to screw up the making of a pot of drip coffee, alligator attacks, Hail Mary football plays, the world record for human female tongue circumference and last but not least, Mountain Chicken Frogs.

keep reading to find out if i succeeded
Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Best-Laid Plans

Posted on by George Gillson

Before this gets underway, I have to point out that I shamelessly took this post’s feature image of the guy with the snazzy oven mitts from a blog called Rebecca Grace Quilting.

I hereby admit that I also shamelessly lifted a picture from that blog, of the author/accomplished seamstress, Rebecca Grace. Rebecca seems like a very friendly person if you ask me:

At this point you’re probably wondering, “Just what the heck kind of an opening paragraph is this, even?”

Just keep reading, ok?
Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

How To Psychoanalyze An Entire Country: Idaho (Part IV)

Posted on by George Gillson

Alert readers of this blog know that here in the Department of Not Having Enough To Do, we concocted a large spreadsheet which codified the relatively unexplored universe of State Attributes aka State Symbols and tried to suss out what the Attributes might tell us about each State.

Based on what I and a friend of mine learned when we staggered around Eastern Idaho for a week this past Fall, we realized that we had to talk about the State Attribute situation in Idaho. We had absolutely no idea what was going on out there.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Idaho. Napoleon Dynamite, the movie, was set in Idaho. Idaho and I were neighbors for three years when I lived in Ontario, Oregon, about a mile from the Snake River/Idaho border. I’ve done a lot of back country exploring/camping in Idaho. One of my sons will soon wed an Idahoan.

So basically, Idaho and I are on good terms. That said, when it comes to State Attributes, Idaho is a bit of a fixer-upper, in need of a bit of sprucing-up

KEEP reading to find out what might boost idaho’s state attribute score
Posted in zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Who is Ted L. Nancy?

Posted on by George Gillson

So.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Bob started talking about the Seinfeld TV show which initially aired back in the early nineties. Eventually I had to ‘fess up and sheepishly disclose to him that I had only seen one episode of Seinfeld when it was current-the one in which Kramer decided to live in his shower.

When “Bob” regained consciousness, after passing out from sheer incredulity, he strongly opined that I absolutely had to watch all 169 episodes, as they were bordering on comedic genius. Not to mention running jokes.

TO FIND OUT WHAT THIS HAS TO DO WITH TED L. NANCY, KEEP READING