The most creative, zaniest thing I have seen in a very long time

Who knew extreme shepherding could be so very funny?



Hat tip to Creative Madness.


Technorati tags: Extreme shepherding, LED sheep, Fun

But when you've got election blahs, there's nothing like aliens to spice things up

Because on October 14th, the aliens are coming. According to Australian author, actress and psychic Blossom Goodchild, a massive spaceship will hover over Alabama (???) for 72 hours starting on October 14, to silence naysayers once and for all. Not to worry. The spaceship comes from the Federation of Light. (Not the Galactic Federation of Light, as some have erroneously stated.)

Canadian UFOlogist Stephane Wuttunee has noted the the convergence of dates also. And he has an explanation.

To stir the waters even further, consider that the Canadian Prime Minister Mr. Stephen Harper in the last week has called for surprise federal elections to occur on (you guessed it) … October 14th, 2008. According to Mr. Alfred Webre from Exopolitics.com, world officials are taking the announcement of the arrival of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in our skies seriously, and plans may already be underway to pull public focus away from such a seminal event and place it on more domestic and political issues instead. In this case, the controversy generated by surprise federal elections would tie up Canadian airwaves quite nicely. If extraterrestrials wish for their presence to be known to the world on that day, they would need to account for this type of potential interference, along with one million other variables.

Of course, being highly evolved Beings, they (hopefully) would.

Well yes, because a Canadian election would certainly be a major distraction from an alien manifestation, wouldn't it? The global press will be massively present in Ottawa and completely unwilling to peel their attention away from the spectacle of Stephen and Stephane duking it out. And Canadians themselves will be too transfixed to notice anything else at all.

Works every time.

His article concludes with a fascinating little video that demonstrates how Goodchild's channeling of the term "snow cone" proves the absolute validity of the October 14th prediction.



Feel like you're entering another dimension? Yeah, I did too. But I haven't laughed so long and so hard in a while, so I am grateful.


Technorati tags: Aliens, Blossom Goodchild, Stephen Harper

Toking up with Lawrence Welk

This clip should come with a beverage alert. Make sure you swallow your coffee before you view it, because you're going to be either spluttering in indignation or howling with laughter.



I led a fortunate childhood. My parents didn't watch Lawrence Welk and I was subjected to him only when I happened to be at my grandmother's house at the wrong time. I much preferred Hymn Sing, trust me. There the content mattered. On the Lawrence Welk Show, content was meaningless and this clip proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But it does leave me wondering: who set him up? There is no way all the young performers on that show were ignorant of the song's real meaning. This was perhaps a bit of a sly wink to all the teenagers who were more or less forced to watch the show.

Hat tip to Tully of Stubborn Facts

Technorati tags: Lawrence Welk

Monkeys Cause the Death of a Delhi Politician

This one was just too weird to let it slip by.

BBC reports that the deputy mayor of Delhi has died after falling from his balcony while fighting off an attack by monkeys. The city has long been infested by aggressive monkeys, to the point that the High Court ordered the city to address the problem.

This is not only strange, it is profoundly so. The intersection of politics, ecology, religion, and urban planning make it more than just another item in a Bizarre News feed.


Technorati tags: Monkeys, Delhi, Bajwa

The ultimate in true crime stories

The problem is, this one was marketed as fiction. It took the police in Poland all of four years to realize that Krystian Bala's 2003 novel bore an uncanny resemblance to an unsolved murder case dating from 2000, and realized that it was an only slightly fictionalized account of how the novelist murdered his wife's suspected lover.

He may be the first villain in history to get paid for his monologue.

For more details, click here,. Hat tip to Done With Mirrors for the more detailed story.

Technorati tags: Crime fiction, Murder, Krystian Bala

Don't offend jelly bellies

Political correctness has claimed yet another sacrifice. But this time the affronted victims calling for blood are not a super-sensitive ethnic or religious group, not of the perpetually grieved feminist persuasion, but of a type we don't normally associate with teary-eyed victimhood. This time we are talking about overweight policemen.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, you had better think twice before you offend the delicate feelings of your local jelly-bellied constable on patrol. It could cost you your job. Ask Police Chief Paul Goward.

Goward committed the impardonable sin of addressing a memo entitled "Are you a jelly belly?" to the 80-member police force of Winter Haven, Florida. Although no individual was named or singled out, hurt feelings prevailed and Goward was forced out for exhorting his force to lose their overhanging guts in the interests of better carrying out their jobs. (Remember Will Smith in Men in Black? "I AM half the man you are!") The department became the butt of fat cop and doughnut jokes. And now they can be the butt of weepy, touchy-feely cop jokes too, and they will richly deserve it.

Speaking as a fellow jelly belly, I say, "Suck it up guys!" Better yet, suck it in. Goward is right. You can't carry out your job as well with suburban sprawl creeping over your belt buckle. (In all fairness to the Lakeland police force, they claim Goward was routinely abrasive and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. But still I can't see anything about the memo in question that warranted a response other than a jog around the block.)

And to society in general I say, why on earth are we constantly looking for reasons to be outraged and offended? I am all for treating other people with compassion and respect, but I am sick to death of the prevailing mentality of reading sexist/racist/insensitive/nasty motivations into just about every word spoken in public. And it is about time that courts, governments and bureaucracies stopped enabling these perpetually offended people. I need my outrage for situations that genuinely warrant it (think Darfur and kiddy porn, just for starters) and these people are giving me outrage fatigue. Grow up and get over it and let's use that energy to tackle problems that actually matter.

Technorati tags: Paul Goward, Winter Haven Florida

Train tickets to the Walrus

People sometimes take the strangest routes to end up at The Walrus Said! These people rarely stay long, but their train tickets amuse, bemuse, or sometimes confuse me.

Here are some of the more unusual search terms that lead people to this blog.

• walrus that have no face (One of the most ignored of minority groups. Stop the conspiracy of silence now!)
• letter of concern by pastor to absenteeism (No, I have no idea why that pointed in this direction.)
• the walrus and the carpenter religion (Hey, if they can build religions around Star Wars or Elvis...)
• walrus kipling (Sorry, sweetie. Kipling didn't write about walruses. But Walrus wrote about Kipling...)
• Walrus speech (Normally slow and incomprehensible. Except here.)
• dangers of walrus leather (Another vital issue deliberately ignored by the MSM)
• reinstate computer to 06 08 06 (Or else!)
• sociology ethanol (There must be a university course on it somewhere.)
• said lost (several times and usually by Germans) (Warum also? Das verstehe ich gar nicht.)
• weird and white and needy (It is absolutely amazing how many people get the title to Weird Al's White and Nerdy wrong. And they all come here.)
• church of walrus (I am speechless)
• walrus effect (Google had no idea either)
• walrus toilet (I really don't want to know)

Technorati tags: Search terms

Union leader and Liberal premier oppose Conservative pollution controls

We have now officially entered the twilight zone. Union leader Buzz Hargrove opposes the Conservatives' plan to enforce emissions controls because it will hurt the auto industry. And Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty plays the national divisiveness card on top of that, portraying Ontario and its auto industry as a victim of the nasty feds. Meanwhile the Conservatives are cheerfully assuring them both that they fully intend to hit the oil and gas industry equally hard.

Are you confused yet? Did you think some gremlin had been switching labels in the news reports? No, you read right. The left wing is attacking the right wing for being too hard on industry and wanting to enact environmental controls.

I was strongly tempted to think that the commitment of the left wing to environmental issues was really just a stick to beat conservatives with and that they had no intention of ever actually DOING anything about it, an impression that was greatly fortified by Paul Martin's shameful and hypocritical finger-wagging at the Americans in the last election. (It was at that moment he lost me completely. Anybody with the slightest interest in the environment knew that the Americans were doing better than us.) Now it has been confirmed. As soon as the Conservatives make a move to pick up that stick themselves, the left wing immediately switches camps. Or at least some of them do.

It was all about politics, not policy.

I certainly hope that the Rona Ambrose's environmental policy will not just contribute to global warming through another mass emission of hot air, but will actually accomplish something. I am one of those quaint people that believes good policy is good politics. If I'm lucky, the Conservatives will be equally quaint.

All of this illustrates how flexible the labels right and left wing are. Which cause belongs to which camp shifts with the political winds. (Remember when supporting Israel was a hard-core left-wing thing to do?) And all the more reason to vote according to your core beliefs, not according to political labels.

Note to Dalton McGuinty: they still sell cars just fine in California. You are seriously eroding your credibility with this mock indignation. We recognize political opportunism when we see it.

Technorati tags: Rona Ambrose, Buzz Hargrove, Dalton McGuinty

The saga of Kipling and the red paperclip

Kyle MacDonald wanted a house. So he put a red paper clip up for trade.

This is the normal way of going about getting a house, isn't it?

His quirky approach to house ownership attracted international attention, and the whole town of Kipling, Saskatchewan is now throwing him a house-warming party. Because he actually succeeded in trading a paperclip for a house. With more than a dozen intermediate trades along the way and a little help from Alice Cooper along the way, mind you. He chronicled the whole process at his blog, One Red Paperclip.

For such a small town (1200 people), Kipling, Saskatchewan, has attracted a lot of attention over the years, sometimes unwanted. It first attracted my personal attention when my father married a Kipling native, but that didn't exactly make international waves. It didn't even make big waves in Kipling.

The romance novelist Mary Balogh succeeded in raising the town's profile a little more than that. Some townspeople were a little concerned when they found out those steamy scenes were being written by the elementary school principal, but once she retired from teaching, I guess the controversy more or less died down.

Then there was the case of the infamous Dr. John Schneeberger, who sedated his female patients to facilitate rape. That one got a lot of attention, I'm afraid, and still can provoke a lot of feeling in Kipling. The first victim was not believed for a good number of years, because the very popular doctor was uncommonly good at covering his tracks.

And you now know more about Kipling than you ever thought to ask.

Really, you don't have to thank me.

Technorati tags: Kyle Macdonald, John Schneeberger, Mary Balogh

A brawl with hardline Buddhist monks

How's that for a set of words you don't often see together? I had to rub my eyes and reread it, too.

Not only were they brawling, but they were on both sides of the fight. A peace protest in the capital of Sri Lanka turned violent when monks in favour of cracking down hard on Tamil Tigers mounted onto the stage where other monks were part of the group pleading for peace, as the island's old civil war revives itself.

Technorati tags: Sri Lanka, Weird news