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This video was brought to my attention by a friend of mine from grad school. Thanks Dana. In this gem, an absolutely adorable little girl shows us her new squirrel friend. If that had been me at her age and my mom, she woulda smacked that squirrel away from me faster than a photon in a perfect vacuum (I actually don’t know if that’s fast). I would have also been placed in a shower designed for nuclear radiation accidents. Instead, this little girl’s parents seem to be pretty cool about the whole thing.

The picture you’re seeing above is of the carpet in the door way to my bedroom in my apartment. The picture doesn’t show it very clearly but there is a long chunk of the carpet missing. I didn’t do this on purpose.

I was vacuuming in my apartment last week when I began to push the unit towards my bedroom. I heard something get caught and I noticed something weird going on near the carpet. I quickly stopped the vacuum and went to see what the hell had happened. When I looked closer, I saw that a huge, long thread from my carpet had came undone and had wrapped itself around the rotating brush underneath my vacuum. Where this thread had been was now a long gap in my carpet. I could now see down into whatever base was installed beneath the carpet.

Even though I was the first person to move into my apartment after it was built, I actually wasn’t the person who got to specify all the design options during construction. I actually have no idea what type of carpet this is. Is it Berber? Bieber? It seems to be woven which is why pulling on the thread caused it to do so much damage. If I had my choice, I wouldn’t have gotten this type of carpet. It feels rough on the feet and it’s not very thick. Plus, having it unravel like that sucks. If I had it my way, I would have either gotten the regular tufted carpet or hardwood floors.

Now how am I gonna fix this?

The above video shows the kid that the Nashville Predators trotted out to center ice to motivate the home crowd before Game 4 against the Vancouver Canucks. I am sure he was nervous getting in front of all those people and I give him accolades for remembering his lines. He does, however, come off as being a bit odd in some sort of way that I can’t exactly pin down. Maybe it’s his delivery and those eyes. Anyways, I’ve never seen a team bring out a kid to diss the opponents before a game. I like how Nashville is thinking outside the box.

As a bonus, at the same game, here are the Green Men chatting up Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.

If you’re like me, you enjoy the comedic stunts put on by the boys of the Jackass crew. They recently released Jackass 3D but they had so much left over material, they almost could make another movie. Rather than let fifty filmed nut-shots go to waste, they’ve decided to put all the extra footage on the Internet. The above clip is just one of the many stunts you can see over Joost.com. A bit of a warning though, it’s completely lame that they make you sign up to watch videos and you’ll be bombarded with ads. It’s all worth it for the nut-shots though.

I’m sure some of you get web site links sent to you from friends while at work. Or, you might be surfing at work (which most people never do of course) and you come across a few interesting links that you’d like to click on. Of course, with the Internet the way it is, you could be one click away from having a screenful of boobies (or much worse) and a subsequent visit to HR. Playing chicken with a URL at work is not a game you want to play. Well, now all your problems have been solved, sorta.

With this new site, you can get a small, squinty-eyed preview of the link in question before fully committing to the click. Why don’t you try it on this blog yourself? Now it’ll take all the guesswork out of whether or not you should click on massivejugs.com while you’re in that sales meeting.

What you are seeing above is a map of the Canadian federal election results for 2011. The blue represents the Conservatives, the orange the NDP, the red the Liberals, the light blue the Bloc Quebecois, and though you don’t see it one tiny bit of green for the Green party. My greatest fear for election day was a Conservative majority for Stephen Harper and that became a stark, sobering reality within the first minute that polls closed on the west coast. You can read the rest of the results here. I could have hoped that Harper got a tenuous majority but that didn’t even happen as he is 25 seats over the mark. What’s the chances of 25 Conservative MPs switching to the opposition? Oh well.

I’ve written it before and I’ll write it again, I know very little about politics but here’s my quick take on the election results. The whole thing went very wrong in southern Ontario. Traditionally, that region could be depended upon to be a Liberal stronghold or at least an area where the Conservatives had a very difficult time making in roads. This time around, southern Ontario for the most part abandoned the Liberals. Unfortunately, they chose to flee to the Conservatives in droves. This gave Stephen Harper the bump he needed to win a majority. I still have no idea what the people of Ontario were thinking. I can only guess that it was the older voters who fell for Harper’s fear-mongering of a “scary” NDP government. Old people can be counted upon to do two things, vote and be scared of everything. Why do you think they’re the only ones who buy robot insurance? I had mistakenly believed that Ontario would have voted more for the NDP, splitting the province between them and the Conservatives. I was wrong about that.

You might be wondering if I would put any blame out in western Canada. No, there’s no way I could honestly do that. Western Canada has been a Conservative stronghold for well over a decade. I didn’t expect any help from the west so there were no expectations there. Though every election, I’m still dismayed at my home province of BC being so blue.

If there could be small, tiny bright note in all of this, I do want to applaud the people of Quebec. They completely abandoned the Block Quebecois, the party whose main purpose was to separate Quebec from the country of Canada. The voters of Quebec wanted a change and they knew the Bloc wasn’t viable any more and Harper wasn’t the solution either, so they bravely voted for the NDP. For them to go from the Bloc to the NDP was a stunning indication of their openness but their boldness was sadly not rewarded.

I also must comment on the sad state of affairs of the once popular Liberal party. They got hit bad, losing about half their seats. They now have four long years to rebuild the party and they are going to need to put in a lot of work. First and foremost, I am really not sure if Michael Ignatieff is going to survive as the party leader. It’s pretty clear that Canadians did not hear his message and he did not resonate with the voters. I now realize what a superstar Jean Cretien was compared to Ignatieff. The question is, who will emerge as an actual effective leader of the party? The name Justin Trudeau has already been mentioned many times tonight. The son of Canada’s most colourful Prime Minister indeed was re-elected tonight but is he still too young to lead the Liberals?

So what does the future hold? I do not know. My fears are the Conservatives now have free reign to change Canada to how they see fit. Lower taxes for corporations? Less spending on health and social programs? Billions in cost overruns for F-35 jets? Restrictions on social freedoms? I don’t want to fear the worst but I feel like I need to prepare for it just in case. The funny thing is, I saw an interview tonight with an NDP party official. He was just absolutely thrilled with his party’s showing. The interviewer asked him what the NDP planned on doing as the new Opposition. He kept on saying the NDP would keep the Conservatives honest and fight for the Canadian people. The interviewer then asked him how the NDP was going to do with a Conservative majority. He had no answer.

So did anything interesting happen in the world over the weekend? Seriously though, when Monday morning comes, the entire world will be talking about that “other” story but here in Canada, we also have a federal election to participate in and watch.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I already voted.

Though I don’t know much about politics, this is what I think will happen at the end of the day. Stephen Harper will still be the Prime Minister of Canada. Personally, I’ll be disappointed in this as I’ve wanted him to be out of the driver’s seat since 2006. I don’t think his Conservatives will have a majority in Parliament, meaning once again, he will have a minority government. The official opposition will consist of the NDP. Though I’m surprised this will be the case, I have to give Jack Layton credit for winning over a substantial amount of voters. He seems to have rubbed Canadians the right way. It’s also disappointing to see the decline of the Liberals over the last few years. The Liberal party has been a significant part of Canadian politics, having governed Canada for most of the last 100 years. I’m not sure what Trudeau would have to say if could see where his party is now.

Because on election day, surprises do happen, I admit I could be wrong about the Conservatives having only a minority government. My biggest fear is that something goes terribly wrong and the Conservatives actually picked up enough seats to get a majority. This would ensure that Stephen Harper would be PM for another four years. I’m glad the Canucks aren’t playing tomorrow, that will allow me to focus on the election results.

Please do your part and go out and vote!

There is no time for a proper post tonight. Every single et.com staff member is preparing scones and tea for a viewing party for the royal wedding today. We saw Becks and Posh arrive a few minutes ago. Now here comes Elton John and his Canadian partner. Man, who knew large, view-obstructing hats were the order of the day?

See you at the palace!

Wow, it’s a been a while since we had the last “brush with greatness” post. Anyways, I was walking along Robson this evening because I heard there was some store selling clothes. I was crossing Burrard when going the opposite way was actor Danny Trejo. I didn’t realize he was 5’7″ but he sure looks like in real life. In the movies he looks a lot taller. He was on his cell phone, talking to someone. Trejo was wearing a track suit, not a like flashy one but more of practical, normal one. A few people recognized him but everyone just left him alone.

On my way home, I saw him again. He was standing near a Roots store, still on the phone. I then saw him take a photo of a window display. I think he was trying to buy something for the person on the other end of his conversation. I really have no idea why he is in town. I looked at his IMDB page and there doesn’t seem to be any projects listed that would be filming in Vancouver. Perhaps he’s doing a cameo that no one knows about. I certainly don’t think he’s here on vacation. It’s still freezing here in Vancouver. Machete!!!

I have to give the Vancouver Canucks credit, they somehow found a way to win tonight. They did, however, also find dozens of ways to flirt with disaster all throughout the evening. Though the Canucks dominated the latter stages of the game, Chicago Blackhawks goaltender Corey Crawford was unbelievable in net. He single-handedly kept the Hawks in the game. The more chances the Canucks got and the longer they they went without capitalizing on those chances, the more worried I got. In ice hockey, not taking advantage of your chances while dominating usually means the other team will eventually turn it the other way and get a goal going against the flow of play. Chicago did exactly that. They used the brilliant goaltending of Crawford to weather the withering Canucks’ attack and then in a opportunistic play, they tied it up.

If I was worried in regulation time, I was doubly so in overtime. Anytime a game goes into OT, it’s essentially a dice roll. A stupid harmless play can turn into a series ending goal. So despite the domination that the Canucks had in regulation, I knew that OT meant either team could win it just easily as the other. Then the Canucks took a penalty in overtime. It easily could have ended there as well. They some how managed to kill off the penalty and even Bobby Lou managed to make a decent save off Sharp.

So how did the Canucks win it exactly? For starters, some of the Canucks came to play with the intensity that a game seven demanded. In particular, Kesler and Burrows raised the level of their game to do the things that were necessary to win. I was especially impressed with Kesler’s effort. The defensemen were also very good tonight. They stood up opponents in the neutral zone and on the blueline. They took away time and space from the Hawks. As a team they also blocked shots and cleared rebounds. This leads to the next key point in the victory. The forwards and defensemen were good enough in their own end so that they didn’t need Roberto Luongo to be anything but average overall. They just needed him to not let in a soft goal and he delivered on that. So despite walking a very thin line at times, they were able to capitalize on a huge error on the part of Chicago and now escape into the second round.

Now this may come as a surprise to some fans here in Vancouver but they actually didn’t award the Stanley Cup to the Canucks tonight. The Canucks will now face Nashville in round two. There are several items that have me slightly worried as the Preds roll into town. First, Nashville has now had two more days of rest than Vancouver. The Canucks will be coming off a huge emotional high, so the risk of coming down from that high and not being able to focus again is a real concern. Second, I can guarantee you some of the Canucks are banged up and walking wounded. Hell, Sami Salo is outright injured. It’s unclear how much gas some of the Canucks used up in the first round. How their epic battle with Chicago will affect their game going forward is to be seen. Last but certainly not least, you have to wonder if some of the leaders on the Canucks team are going to show up against Nashville. Luongo’s troubles in games four and five are well-documented now. Will he suffer another meltdown in the next round or will he have settled down now? It’s a huge question mark on the horizon. Then there is the situation with the Sedins. The two highest scoring players in the league in the last two years had exactly two points between them in the last four games of the series. Let me say that again. After playing games four, five, six, and seven, the brothers had just two points. For players who are supposed to be the top offensive threat on the team and also leaders for the rest of the players, coming up dry in the most critical games of the series is unacceptable. For years, the criticism against the twins was that they were good regular season players but they could not perform in the playoffs. Is such criticism warranted now?

The second round will probably start either Friday or Saturday. The Predators will be another tough test. They have an excellent defensive core led by Shea Weber. Their goaltender, Pekka Rinne has given the Preds a chance all season. For now, the Canucks can rejoice in the fact they avoided a disaster by the narrowest of margins.