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Do you remember Jim Bakker of Tammy Faye fame? When I was kid the disgraced televangelist was going through his scandals. He bilked millions of dollars from his followers and he went to prison for that. The media forgot about him after that happened. I didn’t realize he was paroled early and continued doing what he did best, taking money from fools who would listen to him. Turning back to televangelism, he started this odd focus on survivalism as well. Bakker actually sells his own brand of survival food on his show.

Now some of you might remember I bought some emergency rations as part of my prep for an extended disaster zombie apocalypse situation. As such, I’m interested in how good these Bakker’s survival food might be. Well, the folks at Gawker Media decided to get chef Greg Lauro to prepare and then sample a variety of Bakker’s foods. The video above documents the whole process. I hope I won’t spoil the video for you when I say, if you’re having to subsist on Jim Bakker’s buckets of emergency food during the apocalypse, you might want to just let the zombies eat you.

I don’t really consider myself a prolific prankster. While I pride myself on having a sharp sense of humour, pranks aren’t my thing. I partake once in a rare while and only if the circumstances are right. Well, about a week ago, I was going to the dollar store downstairs to get cheap whatever. I entered the store and then heard the squeak of a rat come at me from one of the displays. I stopped, turned around, and went to see where it was coming from. It originated from a display of Halloween toys and decorations. There were some small plastic rats and crows on sale. They had motion sensors in them and if they detected movement, they’d squeak or caw respectively. With batteries included, they were only $1.25 each. What a steal!

I bought both a rat and a crow and brought them into work the next day. I immediately proceeded to annoy the hell out of my co-workers around me as I placed them in various spots near their desks. One of my co-workers took the rat and placed in a box to stop it from making noise. I eventually took back the crow and wondered what I should do with it.

Then I remembered our production coordinator, whom I’ll call Tiffany for the purposes of this post, was away overseas at a wedding all week and wouldn’t come back until Monday. Late on Friday, I went to her unoccupied desk and gently placed the crow underneath her desk but on top of a small file cabinet. It was at the perfect height and tucked back far enough that it would only detect the motion of her sitting down or getting up from her desk. Then I went off to enjoy my weekend.

On Monday, I didn’t even bother checking in with Tiffany until late in the day. I sent her an IM just saying “caw! caw! caw!”. I thought she’d understand that meant it was me who placed the crow. In my mind, I had expected her to trigger the crow once or maybe twice before discovering where the noise was coming from. She replied to my IM with a confused face emoticon. I replied with, “you can keep the bird” and left it at that. Surely, she knew what I was talking about.

Fast forward to late today, the Tuesday, almost two full days after her return to work. Tiffany saw me near my desk and came up all in face. “It was you!” was her greeting to me. She then proceeded to tell me she had heard the crow for since Monday morning and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. She’d asked the people around her desk to turn down their TVs because she thought it was coming from our game or some other game. Of course, no one knew what she was talking about. I found this immensely amusing but felt somewhat bad. I offered to walk to her desk and show Tiffany where the crow was. On the way over, Tiffany explained to me the hardships she had suffered listening to that damn crow. Damn, that was funny. Once at her desk, I sat down, just to hear what she was hearing. I gotta admit, because it was muffled under her desk, you really couldn’t tell where it coming from. Anyways, I grabbed the crow and gave it to her.

To Tiffany’s credit, she took it from me and I’m pretty sure she walked down a floor and installed it on her friend’s desk, thus continuing the prank. It’s always a dangerous game to annoy a production coordinator because they’re in charge of food for the team. She could take a dump in my food next time!

Before the summer started I really enjoyed getting salads for lunch at the company cafeteria. Yes, a salad will never truly taste better than let’s say poutine but at least they made it a viable alternative. Then sometime during the summer, they replaced the person or persons working at the salad station. They had this new lady making the salads. I could tell she was new. Now I understand that when people are still learning they will make mistakes. You learn from your mistakes and you get better at what you are doing. So, initially I was patient with her when she forgot key ingredients in my salad like the chopped egg, the goat cheese, or the candied walnuts, stuff like that. I even over looked this annoying habit she had of leaning over my plate while preparing my salad to get at the ingredients. While she did this, her sleeve or other parts of her clothing would make contact with my food. I mean really, I was being more than patient.

In general, her salads really weren’t that good compared to the other people who made them before she started working. It’s hard to describe, they just tasted quite meh. After two months of her working the salad station, there were no signs of improvement. She still forgot ingredients and she’d still touch my food with her clothing. I had enough of that, so I stopped getting salads for lunch. If I didn’t like the main entrée selection, I’d go get a sandwich made instead. Speaking of sandwiches, there’s this one lady at the sandwich bar who is so good at her job. She’s quick and efficient and always constructs your sandwich to your exact specifications. Whenever she’s making my sandwich, I know I’m in good hands and that my lunch will be a good one on that particular day.

So where was I? Oh yeah, so if you read my previous post, I ate terribly on the weekend. When lunch time rolled around today, I decided to bite the bullet and get a salad for lunch, even if the salad lady was going to probably screw up my salad. I probably should have bailed when I noticed she was a bit flustered as she was preparing the orders of the people ahead of me in line. Yet, like a fool, I soldiered on. The feature today was a Cobb salad and when I ordered, I asked that they replace the blue cheese with goat cheese, something I’ve done in the past with no problem. By this time, the line behind me was massive because she was a bit slower today than usual in making all the orders. I patiently waited for my salad construction to be finished as more and more people lined up. When she was finally done, she handed me my plate and I looked down and there was the blue cheese which I didn’t want. I took a quick look at the long line and then looked my salad once more and I realized it wasn’t worth it.

I went back to my desk and picked off all the blue cheese from the rest of salad. I ate my lunch with quiet resentment. I really want salad lady to get better at her job but it’s clear to me that probably won’t be possible. I also really want to eat healthy for lunch but if crappy salads are what I’m going to get, then that makes it very difficult. It seems like fate that the people who make poutine, burgers, chicken strips, and fries at the cafeteria never ever screw up. Is that a sign?

This was not a good weekend of healthy eating. After a long week, I decided to chow down on a big old plate of carbs for Friday dinner. I was in the mood for spaghetti and meatballs. Technically, the meat and the tomato sauce wasn’t really that bad for me. The large amount of pasta, however, wasn’t too carb friendly. It was enough of a meal that I thought I’d have leftovers for lunch but to my surprise, I ate the whole thing in one sitting.

I woke up late on Saturday, so I didn’t have breakfast. The first thing I ate that day was a Chinese green onion pancake. It’s essentially a flaky, delicious, and fried piece of pastry. I guess I decided I needed more carbs. To my credit, I skipped lunch partly from guilt and partly from laziness. Later in the day, I went to the grocery store to buy some soy milk for coffee. I also bought a whole bag of Doritos. After getting home, I started watching Hockey Night in Canada and eating the Doritos. One period of hockey later, there were very few Doritos left. I felt tired soon afterwards, so I crawled into my bed to nap. Part of me doesn’t regret that because weekends are about dragging your Doritos cheese stained ass into bed for naps in the middle of the day.

After waking up about an hour later, I decided I needed real dinner. At this point, I really should have had a salad but I decided to go all in and got a Teen Burger combo at A&W. The burger and fries really hit the spot. To my credit though, I refused a soda and drank water instead. My midnight snack consisted of five perogies.

On Sunday, I had another green onion pancake for breakfast (they’re just so good) and didn’t really eat anything else until dinner with my parents. Because I was in the presence of adults again, we had green beans with chicken and a pork chop dish. It was the healthiest meal I had all weekend.

I will try to eat salads all week for lunch now.

Most of you don’t know this but I’m best man for my friend’s wedding. This is his second marriage. I was at his first wedding but I wasn’t his best man for that one. I was just considered a close friend. This time around, I’ve moved up the ladder. Yay!

While I think it’s a great honour to be best man, it’s a role that I’ve never had before. I like to think I take these type of things seriously but when it’s your first time, you don’t have experience to fall back on. For example, I’m in charge of organizing the bachelor party. I’ve never done that before. About a week and a half ago, my friend gave me a list of dudes and date that he wanted the party to be on. I immediately got stressed because there were 30 names on that list. I’ve attended several stags and I’ve yet to see that many dudes on one. That immediately ruled out a few options because the group is so large. To boot, other one of the guys, I don’t know any of them.

In hindsight, I should have asked my friend for the list two months in advance so I had plenty of time to figure out what to do. I then discovered that people are terrible at RSVPing to things. I sent out an e-mail to all 30 dudes explaining what day the bachelor party was and that all I needed from them was just to reply with either a “yes” or “no” if they could make it. Some dudes responded right away with their answer, while others sent theirs a day or two afterwards. Unfortunately, even after about four days, two-thirds of the group hadn’t responded yet. After consulting with my friend, I decided to send a follow-up e-mail. I gave them 36 hours to respond, otherwise I’d just assume they weren’t coming. It was harsh but I needed to get a firm number so I could book a restaurant or a venue, knowing how many people would show. Some people did get their answer to me before the deadline but about 10 people gave me nary a peep.

In the end, it will be sixteen of us including the groom and myself. For the last week or so, I’ve been in touch with two professional bachelor party planners. We’ve been going over different types of venues and activities and price levels. I will say this, as with many things, if you have money, planning a bachelor party is way easier. If I were a millionaire, I wouldn’t even be stressing over this. It’s one of these things in life where throwing money at a problem actually does solve it and in a spectacular fashion I might add.

Alas, I am not rich, so I’ve had to settle for something less extravagant. I’ve tentatively booked a venue, food service, and “entertainment”. It’s within a reasonable budget but I think the guys will also have a good time. One of my biggest fears is that no one will enjoy themselves and I’ll be known as the dude who threw a terrible bachelor party.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be in the position to be best man again but if I am, I’ll be much better at planning the bachelor party next time.

The fire alarm went off twice while I was trying to sleep last night. The first was about an hour or two after I retired to my bed. The second time was closer to morning but still well before my scheduled wake up time. Both times I ignored it because my building has so many false alarms.

Later I discovered the alarms went off because someone pulled them in the parking lot of the retail complex below. When they built all three apartment towers and the retail, some genius decided to connect all the fire alarms. This meant an alarm in one building initially led to all the alarms going off in every building. Over the years, a massive amount of work has gone into separating the alarms. Most of this work is general red-tape BS as various groups and the city have chimed in to figure how to best fix the problem. As an example of how bad this was, a fire alarm in one of the apartment buildings originally triggered alarms in the movie theatre. Because of several firewalls, a fire in either of those places could not reach the other.

As I was reminded last night, the work is still not finished and many more false alarms are in my future.

In the video above, Sue Walker teaches us how to make toast from bread.

In recent weeks I wrote a post about someone farting at work. It happened again today. Sometime in the late afternoon, a massive wave of terrible smelling farts wafted over to my area. Just like last time, it was surprisingly not me who did it.

It was an awful smell and it lingered for far too long. Whoever is doing this is letting those bombs go with nary a toot so it’s difficult to know who’s doing it. I can rule out one of my co-workers around me because he was long gone for the day when this aroma assault started.

I’m afraid someone is gonna blame me for this. It’s not me!

Recently comedian Nathan Fielder appeared on Conan’s show. Fielder is from Vancouver and went to school in Victoria. He describes to Conan the jacket he wore for many years and how the Vancouver company that made that jacket had some interesting thoughts on Nazis. Interestingly enough, I also wore outdoor clothing from that same company for years as well. I stopped buying from them because I also heard about those Nazi stories and also because MEC had better styles. Fielder though, went one step further than I did.