So Much For That

I meant to photo document my day today.
All I got was my grocery shopping.

New Favourite Canadian Product

ESPE Leather Free Wallets & Bags.

What If...

From Gallery of the Absurd

This Made Me Laugh This Morning

I Love the Beach!

"Dr. Beach" has unveiled his yearly list of the Best Beaches in America.


This year's list is as follows:

1. Fleming Beach, Maui, Hawaii
2. Caladesi Island State Park, Dunedin, Florida
3. Ocracoke Island, North Carolina
4. Coopers Beach, Southhampton, New York
5. Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii
6. Main Beach, East Hampton, New York
7. Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
8. Coronado Beach, San Diego, California
9. Hamoa Beach, Maui, Hawaii
10.Barefoot Beach Park, Bonita Springs, Florida

I've only been to Fleming and Hanalei Bay Beach. They are both beautiful beaches but not my favourites.

My favourite beach in the US is this one:




_________ Beach, Kauai

I'm not naming it because it's one of only a few unspoiled beaches left in Hawaii.
You have to hike down to it so it cuts down on the tourists.

And my favourite beach in the world: Pra Nang Beach, Thailand






An absolutely stunning, beautiful beach and country to visit.

Looking Good at 70

David Suzuki 70, is ready to launch The Nature of Things 47th season!
That is an amazing accomplishment by an amazing man.

The Nature of Things season begins Sunday, June 18 on CBC TV, with an episode called Everyday Einstein.

1 in 136 U.S. Residents Behind Bars

This article is scary. I think it's about time to end the drug war.

WASHINGTON - Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.

The total on June 30, 2005, was 56,428 more than at the same time in 2004, the government reported Sunday. That 2.6 percent increase from mid-2004 to mid-2005 translates into a weekly rise of 1,085 inmates.

Of particular note was the gain of 33,539 inmates in jails, the largest increase since 1997, researcher Allen J. Beck said. That was a 4.7 percent growth rate, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in people held in state and federal prisons.

Prisons accounted for about two-thirds of all inmates, or 1.4 million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Beck, the bureau's chief of corrections statistics, said the increase in the number of people in the 3,365 local jails is due partly to their changing role. Jails often hold inmates for state or federal systems, as well as people who have yet to begin serving a sentence.

"The jail population is increasingly unconvicted," Beck said. "Judges are perhaps more reluctant to release people pretrial."

The report by the Justice Department agency found that 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial.

Overall, 738 people were locked up for every 100,000 residents, compared with a rate of 725 at mid-2004. The states with the highest rates were Louisiana and Georgia, with more than 1 percent of their populations in prison or jail. Rounding out the top five were Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

The states with the lowest rates were Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Men were 10 times to 11 times more likely than women to be in prison or jail, but the number of women behind bars was growing at a faster rate, said Paige M. Harrison, the report's other author.

The racial makeup of inmates changed little in recent years, Beck said. In the 25-29 age group, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, which supports alternatives to prison, said the incarceration rates for blacks were troubling.

"It's not a sign of a healthy community when we've come to use incarceration at such rates," he said.

Mauer also criticized sentencing guidelines, which he said remove judges' discretion, and said arrests for drug and parole violations swell prisons.

"If we want to see the prison population reduced, we need a much more comprehensive approach to sentencing and drug policy," he said.

Yahoo News

My Dog Seriously Needs This

The Brake-Fast Dog Food Bowl is a new invention designed to slow down a dog from eating too fast.

Via ~ Strange New Products

I Am So So Sad

I just found out that The Revue Theatre in Toronto is set to close.

The Revue is Toronto's oldest movie theater built in 1912 and it never stopped showing movies. Great movies at that!

I am so sad right now. I used to walk by it every day to and from school. It's even where I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time.

It is such a token of my childhood. My Mum and stepdad also went there all the time. I don't think they ever missed a Woody Allen Festival.

Just watch, the next time I go back to Toronto I'll find that my favourite greasy spoon has been closed. Ok, now I'm just feeling sorry for myself.

My Favourite Scene from One of My Favourite Movies

Withnail & I ~ 1987

London: The Sixties. Two down-on-their-luck actors (Withnail and Marwood) find solace in drink and other substances. Seeking respite from their uneventful lives they escape up north to Penrith to Withnail's uncle's stone cottage. Faced with no modern conveniences, a bunch of oddball locals, and a surprise visit from an amorous "Uncle Monty", their wits are tested, along with their friendship.

What An Awesome Idea

Here's where you can get one.

I've Got To Get This

You can go here to check it out.

The 50 Worst Things Ever To Happen To Music

This is from this month's Blender Magazine.
Some of these are really funny.
I'm just going to post the condensed version, click here for the full article.

50. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Has any record’s influence upon music proved so malignant? Concept albums, progressive rock, Brian Wilson’s nervous breakdown, baby boomers yammering away about the Summer of Love, musicians taking themselves more seriously than cancer surgeons — all the Beatles’ fault. And is there anyone alive who hasn’t suffered a collapse of the will to live during “When I’m Sixty-Four”?

49. That Dude who yells "Freebird" at every rock show

48. Hip-Hop skits

47. Slash quits Guns and Roses

46. Decency

45. Rootkits

44. Rock poets

43. Non-Fake Lesbians

42. Scott Stapp
Although he’s rehabilitated his image in recent years by becoming an incorrigible drunk and trying to beat up 311, there’s no getting around the music. The fourth-generation grunge he’s peddled solo and with Creed might be harmless if it weren’t swathed in quasi-religious pomposity and delivered with an arrogance that — in light of his musical, er, gifts — feels downright delusional.

41. Melisma

40. Parrotheads

39. AIDS

38. Sting

37. Gilbert O'Sullivan

36. Sean Combs is... Puff Daddy is... P Diddy... is Diddy

35. Van Halen fires David Lee Roth

34. Van Halen hires Sammy Hagar

33. Van Halen fires Sammy Hager

32. Van Halen hires Gary Cherone

31. Jazz Fusion

30. Braided Goatees

29. Popera

28. The Disappearence of Independent Record Stores

27. "Jukebox" Musicals

26. Adam Duritz's dreadlocks

25. Tribute Albums

24. Mark David Chapman

23. Woodstock '99

22. Lists That Reduce Rock History To a Series of Glib Soundbites

21. Nearly Every Hip-Hop Video

20. Syn Drums

19. Electric Violin

18. Saprano Sax

17. Fred Durst

16. Replacement Lead Singers

15. CDs

14. Florida

13. Light Aircraft
The first day the music died, it took Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper with it. The next day it took country star Patsy Cline. And then Jim Croce, half of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Denver and Aaliyah There is, it seems, a good reason the tour bus is such a popular transportation option.

12. Kevin Federline

11. "You Really Have To See Them Live"

10. "Colonel" Tom Parker
Meet the Slobodan Milosevic of artist management: Before Suge Knight, Lou Pearlman or even Allen Klein came the “Colonel” — inventor of ruinously exploitative rock management. Getting his hooks into Elvis in 1955, the Dutch con man artfully steered the King away from making music (which he had something of a knack for) and towards the likes of Clambake, Kissin’ Cousins, Kid Galahad and the 30-odd other Hollywood forgettables he made instead of recording or touring for most of the next decade.

9. Whitey

8. The Age of 27

7. Finding God

6. Madonna's British Accent

5. Ecstasy

4. Neverland Ranch

3. "The Star-spangled Banner"

2. Suge Knight

1. Kids Today!
Back in our day, we didn’t have any of yer fancy iPods and ringtones and downloads. We didn’t have the luxury and convenience of your scrotum-rings and your World Wide Web logs. When we wanted to steal the new Uriah Heep album, we couldn’t just troll the Internets for it, we had to do it the old-fashioned way — by hiking to the store (uphill, both ways) and shoving 12” of vinyl under our sweaters (which we had to knit ourselves). That’s why you sniveling whipper-snappers don’t appreciate the real value of music. Or Uriah Heep. Now get the hell off our lawn!

Blender Online

Top 10 Odd College Courses

10. The Art of Walking

9. Death and the Nineteenth Century

8. The Art of Sin and the Sin of Art

7. American Degenerates

6. The Road Movie

5. Comparative History of Organized Crime

4. The Horror Film in Context

3. The American Vacation

2. Daytime Serials

1. Philosophy and Star Trek

For more info on where these fascinating courses are offered.
Click here for full article.

The Empire State Building is 75!

One of my favourite buildings was built 75 years ago today.

Some interesting facts:

Total time: 7 million man hours, 1 year and 45 days work, including Sundays and holidays.

Floors: 102

Weight: 365,000 tons

Windows: 6,500

Total Height: 1,454 feet