Sea Kittens

PETA has once again failed in their quest to limit my diet. In fact, they have broadened it! Now, not only have I had the pleasure of eating fish, but also sea kittens .

Their theory is that we won't hunt, gut, and ultimately ingest a cute and cuddly sea kitten?

The PETA website contains a while bunch of crap material about saving the sea kittens, as well as some entertaining stories. I just read one on a boy who ate a sea kitten and fell victim to the effects of mercury. (The fish was the top of its school, but the boy got stupid. Get it? School? "The irony was not lost on him.")

Thus far, if I type "Sea Kitten" into Wikipedia, it yields PETA. I can only anticipate that some fanatic editor will adjust that to redirect the article on "fish". (In ten years, I expect typing "Fish" will redirect "Sea Kitten".)

Be sure to check out PETA's about page on the topic, which displays a few random facts about sea kittens. (Click the image below to enlarge.)

Brings a whole new meaning to the word catfish.

Wait, no it doesn't.

--
D. Phillips


(Rats! I totally forgot to use my joke about sea cow burgers!)

The 2008 Honeygarlic Awards

Consisting of twelve months (tied for a modern-era record) and 366 days (ditto), 2008 was truly a year unlike any other. To celebrate this great year, I present the First Annual Honeygarlic Awards!

(Note that some of the winners are from December 2007 or January 2009. This is due to inconsistencies in the voting process.)

Our first award tonight is for Movie of the Year. This was made much easier by the fact I saw very few new movies over the course of 2008...the winner, in a landslide, is The Dark Knight!

Excellence in popular culture is also celebrated in the category of Song of the Year! To win, a song must demonstrate popularity, catchiness, and at least some degree of musicianship. This year's winner is The Offspring's You're Gonna Go Far, Kid!

Sticking with music, the award for Fastest Turnaround goes to an unknown song I heard over the Christmas break, which contained the word 'a-shoe-sination'!


The final award in the music category is the award for Best Recycling of Music! It's important to recycle - a principle the CBC should have adhered to when they were looking for a new Hockey Night In Canada theme song. Seriously, who wouldn't have loved this?

We move now to a very special award, the Selflessness Award for Acts of Saving the World. This award is not given out every year; only when somebody has saved the world on a truly major scale. I am honoured to announce that the recipient of the SAASW for 2008 is whoever pushed the Large Hadron Collider turn-on back to February.

The Innovation of the Year award goes to legal sports webcasting. During the Olympics, CBC had nine dedicated online channels for additional coverage to what you saw on your televisions - and two channels for rebroadcasting what was on TV - and they, along with other networks, have only stepped up their game since. No longer do sports fans have to rely on sites such as MyP2P to watch games online.

That's as good a segue as I'll get to move into the sports awards, starting with Sporting Event of the Year. This one was no contest, it was wrapped up VERY early in 2008. Super Bowl XLII was going to be historic no matter what, as the New England Patriots looked to become the first team to go undefeated through an entire NFL season and playoff since 1972. However, the New York Giants had other plans, and the game was back-and-forth, close throughout. Then, when it looked like everything was finally breaking the Patriots' way - all they needed was to stop NY from picking up five yards on one play - this happened. New York won.


In most years, that catch would have also picked up the award for Sporting Moment of the Year - but as I mentioned earlier, 2008 was not most years. 2008 was an Olympic year, and the Olympics were dominated by the story of American swimmer Michael Phelps going for a record eight gold medals - all of this leading to the Men's 100m Butterfly being the most exciting aquatic race I've ever witnessed.

The award for Best Published Rant from a Honeygarlic Blogger's Relative goes to this one - it's just too bad the audio doesn't work.

Longtime readers of this blog may recall my frustration with Dictionary.com's Word of the Day e-mails. 2008's winner of the award for Worst Word of the Day of the Year came in at the last possible minute - on December 31, the word was ultimate.

The award for Worst Book of the Year goes to The Futurist. It may have been 2007 when I read it, but the bittnerness remains.

This year's winners of Comedy Duo of the Year are TSN's Jay Onrait and Dan O'Toole, who pay more attention to being entertaining than talking about sports. And they sometimes wear the same suits.

The Best Question of the Year, limited only to questions asked of myself, "do you want to watch _______ sleep with me?" (name removed to protect the humiliated).


The Best Answer of the Year, on the other hand, does not need to involve me at all - and this year it doesn't. Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, on whether there is any way his party will support the budget due out later this month: "if my grandmother had wheels, I would call her a tractor".

For the year 2008, Lifetime Achievement Awards are handed out to Brian and Chris. They qualify on the grounds that they are names people mistook for being mine.

And our final award is the Most Awkward Photo Op Award, which goes to...


Welcome to 2009, everybody.

--Ryan

Okay now let's all pause for a moment and say 'aww'...

...because there's really no way you can have any other reaction to this story.

I strongly suggest that you read the entire article, but if you want a quick summary: a German boy (aged 6) and girl (5) ran away from home to get married in Africa. This wasn't just a random act of fun, it was quite clearly planned in advance - they had swimming gear and the girl's older sister (to act as a witness) in tow, and knew which trains they should be taking.

If nothing else can be said about these two, it's that their goal was far more adorable than somebody marrying a wall. What is it (vas ist it) with Germany and this sort of thing?

--Ryan

UPCAT Results 2009 To Come Out Tomorrow

University of the Phippines College Admission Test (UPCAT) results for 2009 will soon be released through the UPCAT Results Online. The site will display the web version of the UPCAT results come January 9, 2009 (which eventually beacme January 17, by the way).The UPCAT Results for 2009 will also be posted at the Office of Admissions by the 3rd week of January, 2009. It can also be retrieved and

Iggy and the stooges

(Coming this weekend, the first-annual honeygarlic awards - that's right, the Garlickies!)


It looked as though the Liberal Party was doing really well. A new leader, Michael Ignatieff, who is both a great orator and easy to understand in either of Canada's official languages (when I can understand spoken French, something good is going on). Warren Kinsella back to run the war room and maybe give the Liberals a decent communications department. A political position that would force the Conservatives to give in on a few points, or lose the entire government.

Things seemed good.

I guess they weren't.

This past Monday, I received a flyer in the mail. On the front, the caption 'The Conservatives misled Canadians on the economy' and a picture of Stephen Harper looking like he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Definitely a good start - not quite as catchy as "Stephane Dion is not a leader", but almost as easy to explain.

Open up the leaflet, and there's some pretty damning contradictory evidence. Jim Flaherty saying "we will not run a deficit". Independent (i.e. non-partisan) budget officer Kevin Page revealing that the Conservatives will, in fact, run a deficit - somewhere in the neighbourhood of $50 billion over four years. A reminder that when the Conservatives took power, they had a $13-billion surplus left over from the Liberals - plenty of evidence to support the claim that the Liberals are good managers of the economy, the Conservatives are not. All that's really missing is a reminder of how far in debt the country was after Mulroney.

Finally, the coup de grace - Harper's memorable assertion that the downturn represented a "good buying opportunity", and a note that had anyone followed Harper's advice and bought a TSX index fund, their investment would have fallen another 21%!

All in all, a very good pamphlet, more effective than any of the million I've seen from the Conservatives over the past couple of years - if for no other reason than its reliance on facts over scare tactics.

But wait! There's more! Silly me, always forgetting that paper can be two-sided.

A three-question partisan survey, asking questions about Conservatives and the economy, and offering you the chance to join the Liberal e-mail list. To respond, simply tear off that fold, as the other side has been helpfully filled out with the mailing address of...

...

...

"Hon. Stephane Dion
Leader of the Opposition"

...

...oh, Liberals. And you were doing so well, too.

--Ryan

Of Clocks and Buttons - A Review of the Movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

Do you remember as a child wearing you parents clothing mimicking to be a grown up? Or wanting to be an adult as soon as possible during your teens so you could be independent and do anything you want? But now that you’re older, you somehow want to go back in time even just a few years, if only possible; or at least look like one with some medical help. Well, Benjamin's case is a little more

Artists Sing for Red Cross

Red Letter Night was finally held 2 nights ago where various artists performed for the benefit of Philippine National Red Cross.Organized by fellow artist-singer and Awit Awards-winner Dianne Elise, it was held at Fiamma along Jupiter St. where 3rd Avenue Band, fellow Awit Awards-winner Thor, and other artists performed.They were also joined by Soul Child Julianne, The Out of Body Special, and