If I Were a Billionaire – Part 1

With the advent of social media, we’ve been given an unprecedented look into the private lives of the rich and famous. And what are these affluent individuals doing with their vast resources and spare time? Playing rocket-powered cybernetic water polo? Having every one of their individual hairs gold leafed? No. No, as far as I can tell from their status updates, rich celebrities spend most of their spare time sitting on their butts playing video games or watching TV. In fact, I’d say that they seem to spend a great deal more time on their butts than the average person.

Seriously, if I see one more tweet from a famous actor about how they’re eating Funyons and going on a Netflix binge…

a drawing of laurel green holding bags of money
money money money

But I digress. Their choices of what to do with their means is not what I would choose if I were in the same position. Who am I to judge? “Different strokes” and such.

But, hoo-boy let me tell you, if were a lady of wealth, there would be rich guy shenanigans and capers a-plenty. No butt-sitter would I be.

I would live in a tree house in the centre of a hedge maze. Dressing like David Bowie from the movie Labyrinth, I would taunt UPS men in their attempts to deliver packages to me. Anyone who traverses the maze will be rewarded with a ten-pound Wether’s Original.

Remember those annoying talking shoes from MC Hammer’s horrible cartoon Hammerman? I’d have a bunch of those genetically engineered and you’d all get a pair for Christmas.

I’d pay FOX to stop making more seasons of The Simpsons.

At night, I would disguise myself as a commoner and partake in their drunken revelry. A dawn, I would reveal myself as their queen and reward the serf who I was entertained by with the hand of my no-good brother, the Duke of Scarborough.

I would have Cadbury Cream Eggs enlarged to the size they were when I was a kid.

I would commission a giant pink flamingo statue to put on my front lawn. The flamingo will emit a low-level buzzing noise that will set visitors ill at ease.

I would have a dogsbody. I just like saying “dogsbody”.

I would start a league for the world’s most dangerous game: red rover. The uniforms will consist of tutus, moon boots and fuzzy cowboy hats. The trophy for winning will be a silver-plated sippy cup and, of course, the winning team will get to sip the finest Canadian beer from it.

I would finally be able to afford juice that’s actually 100% the fruit that it’s supposed to be. No more of this “cocktail” or “blend” nonsense.

There would be Magic Eye wallpaper all throughout my house. It would be stereograms of kittens frolicking, mostly. I don’t care if it would give me a constant headache.

I would stop doing that thing where, when I’m low on shampoo, I swish some water around in the bottle to stretch-out the remainder. I’d just buy a brand-new bottle, baby!

I would travel everywhere in a blimp, even just down the street to go pick up some groceries. I will have special attire just for wearing in my blimp, of course there will be goggles included in this outfit.

I would have a herald who will announce loudly the arrival of the mailman each day. He will list a bunch of fake titles for the mailman, such as “The Baron of Spam” or “The Marquis de Mail”. My herald will have a fancy trumpet.

I would have pants encrusted entirely in LEDs. The LEDs will have a slow pulse frequency causing a phantom array effect, so they’ll look really freaky when I walk.

I would use my influence to start a curly-toed show trend. If there can be a drop-crotch pants trend, then there can be a curly-toed shoe trend.

There would be a marble arena, wherein I would host twice-daily toddler fights free for viewing by the public.

If possible, I would have a genetically-engineered minotaur put in my maze, otherwise, I would just put a particularly ornery dairy cow in there. Moo.

I would assemble a team of teenagers with attitude to pilot my extensive collection of mecha and to run errands for me.

I would have a naked mole rat habitat in my living room. Guests would be regaled with various naked mole rat facts. It would be the highest honour for one of my naked mole rats to be named after you.

I would have a lifetime supply of new sock, so I would never have to such through my clothing for a matching pair ever again.

Basically, I would be a menace, if I were a rich person.

Exiled to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia – The Waterfront Fire Aftermath Part 1

Today, I went down to the waterfront to check on the damage caused by last night’s fire. The building looks like it has been pretty much gutted by the blaze and it mostly likely will have to be demolished, which will change the look of the Lunenburg waterfront drastically. This building was on pretty much every postcard of Lunenburg.

If the building actually is salvageable, I wonder if it would actually be wise to fix it.  I think that it would be better to build a new building with the same dimensions of the old one, but to today’s building standards which are much safer. Frankly, it’s not as though the building was some sort of triumph of architecture. It was basically a giant red rectangle with a peaked roof.

It's just a flesh wound.
It’s just a flesh wound.

The fire marshal says the fire was most likely electrical in nature, which ties into my theory that for a lot of the buildings around here, the upkeep isn’t that good. I wonder how many decades it’s been since many of these places have been inspected and what kind of building code violations they’d let slide for a building that was built before the codes existed.

Eh, replace the roof. Slap a new coat of paint on the place. It should be fine.
Eh, replace the roof. Slap a new coat of paint on the place. It should be fine.

Looking at this, they were very lucky that those two gas tanks on the left didn’t explode.

Exiled to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia – The Waterfront Fire

This isn’t exactly the way that I wanted to start off my Exiled series, but here goes…

I’ve been staying in a house in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and, well, there was a giant fire near my house. Actually, at this moment, the firemen are still hosing it down, although I can no longer see any flames, so that’s probably a good sign.

I believe that I heard the first sirens at about 6:30 PM and the sirens kept coming for hours after. I heard that there were up to 16 firetrucks, but I haven’t seen a verified source for this. It was really important to get the fire contained as soon as possible, as Lunenburg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the buildings are considered historically important. Also, because the buildings are so old, they don’t have any of our new-fangled fire retardant building materials, just highly inflammable wood, and a whole block of buildings could quite easily go up in flames. I was a bit worried that flying sparks could catch this house alight, but the wind never seemed to blow this way.

Lunenburg Nova Scotia Waterfront Fire Photo 13
Well, that ain’t good.

I was a bit irked by all the looky-loos that drove up with their cars, clogging up the street and making things difficult for the fire trucks. It only takes about 10 minutes to walk across this town. There was no need for all the cars everywhere. I just can’t believe how inconsiderate people can be. They were endangering themselves and others by being too lazy to use their legs. Not, that being a pedestrian looky-loo is that much better, but, heh, that’s what I was, so I can’t complain about that kind. ;)

Lunenburg Nova Scotia Waterfront Fire Photo 14
This is really, really not good.

Judging by how long and intense of a burn this was, I doubt that the building will be salvageable. I’ll have a look tomorrow to see how bad the damage is. Odds are that all the postcards of the waterfront will be sans this building in the future.

Lunenburg Nova Scotia Waterfront Fire Photo 12
Nice Crane!

From what I hear about this building, it was pretty much abandoned and the company that owns it was looking to sell it. There area lot of empty stores, houses and other buildings around here. This kind of event makes you wonder about whether there is any upkeep being done on these  empty buildings or whether they’re just being left to rot.

Here’s some bad video I took of the fire from one of the windows on the upper floor. I you look closer you can see firemen on the ladder in some shots, you can also hear my dog wimpering, he was quite agitated by the whole event.

Here’s a gallery of the rest of the photos that I took, if that kind of thing interests you.

Twitter Timewarp Tuesday #6

BLAH. BLAH. BLAH. TWITTER. BLAH. BLAH. BLAH.

There’s always a loophole.

Ergo, curiosity is a good thing for cats to have.

Seriously, do they have to take all the balls out and hose everything down? Or, do they just let the pee settle to the bottom of the pit and hope that everything dries off eventually?

Jennifer Tilly is a poker player and I’m pretty sure that she’s been Botoxed to Hell and back. Her face is frozen, so she doesn’t have to make any effort to maintain a poker face. Why isn’t Botox considered a performance enhancing drug in poker? Also, you shouldn’t be allowed to get plastic surgery on your face and be a professional poker player.

Heh. Math jokes.

If you want your skin to look nice into your old age, just quit futzing around with it so much.

I have freezies that need opening consarnit!

Seriously, Canada had a conspiracy where our weather predicting groundhog, Wiarton Willie, was replaced with an impostor. They call the new groundhog “Wee Willie”. Canada is fun.

I bet snake oil is more effective than homeopathy.

Heh. Depressed animal jokes.

BLAH. BLAH. BLAH. NEXT WEEK. BLAH. BLAH. BLAH.

Twitter Timewarp Tuesday #5

I’m busy messing around with website backend junk, so you only get one old tweet today and it’s THE BEST TWEET EVER!

Seriously, I was trying to better myself by learning something new, and I know a lot of guitar nerds, but no one could give me a good recommendation for an awesome double guitar. Sometimes I doubt the rock credentials of some of these people. JEEZ.

Twitter Timewarp Tuesday #4

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN!

For a while, Facebook wouldn’t allow you to list “civil union” or “domestic partnership” as your relationship status. To this day, I don’t think that they allow any type of polyamorous relation to be listed, not with more than one person listed in the partnership at least.

My bank makes you call in for just about every little change to an account. They always try to upsell you on junk you don’t need and half the time they don’t seem to understand what it is that you’re asking for.

Is this some sort of covert drug paraphernalia thing? Sometimes it’s only a quarter pickle slice type of deal.What kind of a person goes into a gas station and buys a part of a pickle? It’s just weird.

I don’t understand people that make sure that their dishes are spotless, but don’t brush their teeth.

It’s cruel to have a delicious-smelling barbeque and not to invite poor, starving Laurels to partake in that deliciousness.

Basically, I want to go into a restaurant and be an ass, is what I’m saying here.

What is with people that put so many cracker in their soup that it’s not really soup anymore? I think they just really want an excuse to eat crackers. My patented cracker-flavoured spread is the ultimate solution for them.

Try and laugh while making a T noise. TRY IT.

Cleaning out people’s weird hoards is always fun.

I hate coloured toilet paper. HATE IT. It’s just so wrong and icky.

 

That’s all for this week and junk. See you on the flipside of the downlow.