I'm Overdo for a Rant

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.

Dick Gregory (1932 - )

 

I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.

New York City detective

 

Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.

Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988)

 

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.

Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )

 

Things could always be worse; for instance, you could be ugly and work in the Post Office.

Adrienne E. Gusoff

 

 

There is no sign marking the crossroads community of Dog’s Nest north of Lake Erie, seems it was such a collectors item township workers couldn’t keep them on the post. 

 

I’m a bit behind in my magazine reading so I recently came across a new tale about the challenges of preparing the Christmas Turkey.  The turkey helpline regularly publishes lists of beleaguered chef’s gaff’s like the lady who called to report that she’d accidentally set her oven on auto-clean with the turkey inside or someone attempting to bake a deep frozen 25 lb bird—2 days defrost time in a refrigerator.  Seems in an ever widening range of methods that have been developed to prepare the perfect bird someone came up with the idea of deep frying it.  Unlike a turducken that takes 12 hours deep frying takes 20 minutes however miss steps with over-heated oil can result in more than a flambéed fowl.  Other hazards include overfilling the container with oil and upset.  Placing an improperly thawed bird in hot oil can cause rather spectacular boil-overs when the hot oil suddenly hits the ice and turns it to steam.  Some things, it would seem, are best left to the professionals.  The same issue of MacLean’s also talked about heritage bronze turkeys but who can afford turkey at $100 a pound?  

 

In honour of Obama’s inauguration Ben and Jerry’s introduced a special Butter Pecan flavour called Yes Pecan with a picture of the prez. 

 

In Germany a scrap metal firm cutting up an old safe found it to contain over ¼ of a million Euros left behind when a bank disposed of it.  OOPS!

 

When did provincial park and conservation campground guides become more about the hazards, do’s and don’ts and even a listing of offences and the fines appertaining thereto than about the parks resources and how to enjoy them?  After reading the park’s brochure for Turkey Point, for example, why would anyone who didn’t already know the place want to go there?

 

What better way to  ride down a bobsled run than in a Chinese Wok or that’s how they do it in Germany of all places. 

 

“Will you have fries with that?”

 

The Golden Arches is not on my list of gourmet stops so I had to read MacLean’s back in Canada to learn that with profits falling and franchises closing up shop in the land of super-sized fries MacDonald’s has started charging patrons for the privilege of squeezing ketchup and vinegar out of those infernal blisterpaks.  Airlines, you may remember have the problem licked by not feeding their patrons in the first place, even bottled water sales are down—the only drink available since onboard reservoirs on planes, trains and boats were discovered to be contaminated and the cost of cleansing them  deemed to be too high.