Dumb reasons to call 9-1-1

When calling 9-1-1, make sure that it is because it is an actual emergency.

This is a list of 9-1-1 nuisance calls found in many places around the internet:

  • My TV isn’t working.
  • Which way do I turn the clock for Daylight Saving Time?
  • My lawn chair blew over.
  • This restaurant won’t accept my coupon.
  • This store refused to give me a refund on a sandwich.
  • I need to find my coat.
  • Tim Horton’s doesn’t want to replace my Iced Capp.
  • Where was my car towed?
  • What could I do about a business that blocked me on Yelp because I left a bad review?
  • How do I get the cranberry sauce out of the can without it coming out in chunks?
  • I am calling from a 911-only phone. Can you put me through to Papa John’s Pizza?
  • A second-hand mattress I purchased was more soiled than advertised.
  • I am at a movie theatre and my sister is refusing to share her food.
  • How do you turn off the headlights on my car?
  • The drive-thru at KFC is too long.
  • How do you enter a career in law enforcement?
  • My windshield wipers stopped working.
  • Where’s the best place to get a bacon sandwich at 4AM?
  • There’s a squirrel on top of a telephone pole and it isn’t coming down.
  • Do you know what time it is?

Alive but without my permission: Worrisome medical reports from around the globe

From actual medical reports and medical registers.

  1. The patient has no previous history of suicides.
  2. Patient has left her white blood cells at another hospital.
  3. Patient’s medical history has been remarkably insignificant with only a 40 pound weight gain in the past three days.
  4. She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night.
  5. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.
  6. On the second day the knee was better and on the third day it disappeared.
  7. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.
  8. The patient has been depressed since she began seeing me in 1993.
  9. Discharge status:- Alive but without my permission.
  10. Healthy appearing decrepit 69-year old male, mentally alert, but forgetful.
  11. Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.
  12. She is numb from her toes down.
  13. While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent home.
  14. The skin was moist and dry.
  15. Occasional, constant infrequent headaches.
  16. Patient was alert and unresponsive.
  17. Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.
  18. She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life until she got a divorce.
  19. I saw your patient today, who is still under our care for physical therapy.
  20. Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation.
  21. Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized.
  22. The lab test indicated abnormal lover function.
  23. Skin: somewhat pale, but present.
  24. The pelvic exam will be done later on the floor.
  25. Large brown stool ambulating in the hall.
  26. Patient has two teenage children, but no other abnormalities
  27. When she fainted, her eyes rolled around the room.
  28. The patient was in his usual state of good health until his airplane ran out of fuel and crashed.
  29. Between you and me, we ought to be able to get this lady pregnant.
  30. She slipped on the ice and apparently her legs went in separate directions in early December.
  31. Patient was seen in consultation by Dr. Smith, who felt we should sit on the abdomen and I agree.
  32. The patient was to have a bowel resection. However, he took a job as a stock broker instead.
  33. By the time he was admitted, his rapid heart had stopped, and he was feeling better.
  34. The patient refused autopsy.

I’ve seen this posted in lots of places, and I got it from a friend, but I also found it printed twice on this page. In turn, that blogger attributed these same quotes to two different hospitals. In actual fact, I don’t believe these came from any single hospital.

[Video] DHMO: The ultimate conspiracy theory

In answer to Bunk Strutt’s re-broadcast of a conspiracy-nut video about rainbows oozing out of our ground and taking away our rights, here is a notable response in the same vein which heretofore has been under-viewed.

First, you must view the original video:

Then, view this particular response to the video (which in my opinion was the best out of several responses):

I understand that, according to a site I visited (link below), the answer to what is oozing out of our ground, and the answer is DHMO, or something called “Dihydrogen Monoxide”, alternatively known as “Hydric acid” or “Hydroxyl acid”. Inhalation of its liquid form can cause death in minutes, and exposure to its gas form can cause second-degree burns. It is also a principal ingredient in acid rain, and is also used in nuclear power plants as a coolant. It has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients. In fact all diseased people seem to be loaded with the stuff. DHMO is also used in cruel animal experiments.

To precisely explain the shocking truth of both phenomena above, experiments have shown that fine sprays of DHMO will cause it to diffract sunlight, causing the presence of rainbows. In addition, the second video was wrong in implicating sulfur as being the cause of “yellow snow”. The scientific community is unanimous in that, after repeated experiements and scientific papers, in the shocking conclusion that the addition of diluted urea to one of the solid forms of DHMO will actually cause it to turn yellow, and melt somewhat, exactly as you saw in the video.

DHMO’s solid form has been known to cause automotive brakes to fail by reducing the degree of friction between tires and the road to almost zero. DHMO concentrates itself in huge areas of our sky on a daily basis worldwide, sometimes even blocking out our sun and interfering with radio waves. DHMO also seems to concentrate itself in many junk foods as well. Yet, the government feels that it is safe for us, and they do not seem to feel that by blocking our radio signals that DHMO is tampering with freedom of the press. It is time to stand up for our rights! Say NO to DHMO! Thank you.

I present my research reference.

I will accept any donations to this cause that you are willing to give.

The most expensive coffee in the world

Bunk Strutts has written up about kopi luwak, which is regarded as the rarest and most expensive coffee in the world. I thought I would comment on it, since I have read a fair bit about it.

Asian Palm Civet Facts, Habitat, Diet, Life Cycle, Baby ...
The asian palm civet.

First of all, when I first heard about asian palm civets, they were referred to as “civet cats”.  But “civet cats” have been used to refer to almost any odd-looking small furry animal, ranging from raccoons to actual cats. The asian palm civet is related to the mongoose.

The asian palm civet lives in the islands of Indonesia, and they eat the coffee berries, which passes through their digestive tract only partially digested. These partially digested coffee beans are what is used to make kopi luwak, the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee.

I first read about kopi luwak a few years ago from a science journal (a brief article by Dr. Massimo Marcone of Guelph U), and from then I was hooked on the idea. I just found the idea fascinating that the “dump” of a mongoose is so sought after as a high-class delicacy.

What could you do with kopi luwak beans with an off-flavour? If you covered them in chocolate, it would make the world’s most expensive chocolate.

I can understand the coffee being expensive. Just imagine: someone has to follow a small mammal through a thick rainforest, and pick coffee beans from their dump. Now these are small mammals, with small digestive systems, so how far and for how long do you need to follow these mongooses (this plural is from Wikipedia) around to get a pound of coffee? This is the reason that the entire Indonesian output of kopi luwak is under 500 kg per year, and that the price of a pound can actually be up to $600. (Wikipedia)

A Tale of Two Joes (Joe Sixpack and Joe The Plumber)

It was the best of Joes, it was the worst of Joes; it was the age of connectedness, it was the age of alienation; it was the moment of truth, it was the moment of lies; we were shown the light, we were all kept in the dark; it was the dawn of Change, it was the twilight of monotony; we had everything to gain, we had everything to lose; we were taking the highway to Heaven to listen to Elvis, we were taking the highway to hell to listen to AC-DC.

— Chuck Dickens (I had to get that out of my system)!

Disclaimer: This was meant as a joke and does not confer a preference for the greater works of Elvis Presley on my part. And to put the Elvis fans to rest, I am also not a fan of either the greater or lesser works of AC-DC.

I have heard on the net about people commenting that Joe Sixpack and Joe Plumber have no place in political discourse. Joe Sixpack would likely desire intelligent discourse with a sober Palin maybe after chugging a sixpack or two. Then, sufficiently inebriated, would then proceed to have what would seem to the inebriated mind an intelligent discourse with Palin. This is also how a Joe turns a dog into a fox.

Joe Plumber, unlike Joe Sixpack, is not fictitious. He is properly nicknamed “Joe The Plumber”, and was first reported talking policy with Obama. Joe The Plumber’s actual name consists of neither “Joe” nor “Plumber”. His real name is Samuel Wurzelbacher. So, I guess he is kind of fictitious as well.

Joe Sixpack looked like a hard-working guy and the press has been all over him. It is as if they, after looking strenuously across America for an everyday person to talk to (it being so difficult to locate everyday people in the lower income brackets, consisting of over 60% of the country’s population), they found Joe The Plumber, who is presented to us as just a common hard-working guy grossing about a quarter million per year, as he told Obama. In whose universe is someone with such an income an “ordinary American?” Joe The Plumber does not exist in the sense that the media is fabricating the narrative, anymore than Joe Sixpack would exist anywhere, at any time.

We all await a successor to George Bush The Lesser.

The “real” Joe Sixpack weighs in, with the truth behind the hoopla, as shown in this mockumentary:

And, yet another Joe, some running mate of Obama’s who goes by the name of Joe Biden in this video, is said to “rip apart” McCain and Palin. All sensationalism aside, Joe Biden is simply telling it like it is.

(Crappy album covers — sidebar) — The Shaggs: A quandry

Much of my youth was devoted to getting any info I could about the pop music culture I grew up in. From time to time, there would be the odd mention of The Shaggs, a band of four young sisters, Dorothy, Betty, Helen and Rachel Wiggin. In fact, there was (and likely still is) a strong cult following led by the likes of Frank Zappa. The album depicted here is a compilation called “Shagg’s Own Thing”, released in 1982. If anyone were to be introduced to The Shaggs, I would recommend this album first, since it is a better approximation of conventional music.

I don’t wish to go into a long diatribe about the history of The Shaggs. They are well-written about and have been reviewed, especially after the reissue of “Philosophy of the world” by RCA in 1999, in such publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker.

This second album was their 1969 debut, “Philosophy of the World”, recoded a few months before Woodstock. To quote Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell, from their book “The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time”: “In their insistence that technical proficiency was immaterial, The Shaggs were the original punk rockers.”

People are largely on two minds about The Shaggs. On the one hand, they don’t seem to know how to play their instruments, their instruments and their voices appear to be out of tune, and they have no consciousness about keeping time with each other. If you listen to their music, this is depressingly obvious, and you feel embarrassed for them.

One gets the feeling that these sisters probably never wanted to be in a band. That was their father’s idea, and the sisters’ desires didn’t matter. This reprint of the New Yorker article paints a picture of daughters who lived in fear of Austin Wiggin, their authoritarian father, who hated much of the popular culture that was around him, and worked hard to shelter his daughters from those influences. Yet, he wanted his daughters to play popular music, partly to make a name for himself in his home of Fremont, New Hampshire; and partly to fulfill a prediction made by his clairvoyant wife that his daughters would play in a band. Neither parent was remotely musical, the kids were homeschooled, and this separated them even more from mainstream culture. What musicality could possibly emerge from such a deprived environment?

That being said, there are those who, thirty years on, still think they were on to something. I go with my instincts, and think that this was a family run by a controlling father, and what desires really exist within them to become whole; any move toward even knowing their own feelings and desires was something that only became possible after the death of Austin in 1975. The Shaggs were an extension of Austin, and had little to do with the young ladies.

Bobbi Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe, remembered

I was listening to a Pravda Records cover of a song from the late ’60s called “Ode to Billie Joe” (originally a Bobbi Gentry tune). It made me think about the original, the words, and musings about how hard it is to play on the guitar.

I recall there was also a mysticism regarding the words and what the story was really trying to say. Most obviously, it is a story about suicide and how callous people can be when speaking about the death of those not close to them. And sure, the pragmatic farmer’s mentality really comes out in the song. Rumor has it that the Tallahatchie Bridge (the one in real life) collapsed in 1972.

Wes Clark discusses this topic to its ultimate futility.