Cultural Moment: Spamalot!

If it's a musical it counts as a cultural moment! A hilarious cultural moment (up there with Evil Dead but less bloody)! Python nerdy goodness enjoyed by all!
The reviews from the Regina Leader Post are at the bottom of the news page on the official Spamalot webpage (here). It had all the important bits from the Holy Grail movie that everyone was expecting and a mixed up story that was funny and delightful. Yay for culture!

Sorry I'm not writing more, but I'm using my time machine for this post and writing it eight months in the future! Hello future blog readers! Consequently, I'm fuzzy on specifics. But I bought the cast recording (and a fridge magnet for Wade...hi Wade!) and am listening to it...it's good. I already have the evil pointy-teethed bunny because D&T got it for me for my birthday a while back! That's no ordinary rabbit!

The future is here!

Lisa's wedding invitation from Season 6 Episode 19 ("Lisa's Wedding"), which originally aired March 19, 1995. The future was so far away then!

p.s. thanks to D for the bit of trivia!

Venn Diagrams

Now with this handy chart that has been circulating the internets, everyone can shout "NERD!" at true nerds with maximum efficiency.It seems Venn diagrams are all the rage these days. I quite like the website Indexed, which is a great source of graph related hilarity/inobtrusive social commentary (although it's not all Venn diagrams) and it even has a nerds vs. geeks comic too. Here's some other good ones, apparently done in honour of Indexed. I especially like the zombie/Jesus/Frankenstein one. Ha!

p.s. I also really like this one about hybrid cutlery. Hee hee...Knork!

Besos y Lagrimas

The new episode of SNL featured the third installment in the Latin soap opera spoof "Besos y Lagrimas" with JLo (the first was with Antonio and the second was with Christina Aguilera). You can watch it on the Global website here), it's funny because it's true!

Watch "Besos y Lagrimas" con Antonio Banderas in Comedy | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


I had to put it up because little cp is feeling super nostalgic. And now how about a clip from the 1981 Chilean telenovela La Madrasta (click to view), which features a priest and a woman in a silk robe having a discussion with a man with a mustache. By contrast, here is a clip from the recent Chilean telenovela Cuenta Conmigo (please note the disturbing lack of mustaches):

p.s. both of these shows are produced and shown by Canal 13 in Chile
p.p.s. Our hearts and thoughts go out to our Chilean friends during this difficult quake time. We are so thankful that our loved ones are safe and hope for the best for everyone in little cp's adopted country!

Olympics 2010

Exclusive Winter Olympics news & widgets at NBC Olympics.com!

Superbowl Commercials 2010

While I watched the Superbowl on Canadian TV and didn't get to see any of the commercials, but there is this thing called the internet. Also, the makers of commercials don't care where you see it as long as you see it so the SB XLIV commercials are easy to find. There were a few pretty hilarious ones but my fave was this one with Alec Balwin for hulu. Other people will tell you it was the Betty White Snickers add that was the funniest (and it was pretty funny) but nope it was this one. Delightful!


But a very close second was of course this one with The Simpsons for Coke:

2010 | Super Bowl Ads | SPIKE.com

p.s. If you're curious, SPIKE has the goods on Superbowl commercials way back to 2002 (and a list of the all time classics, like that Budweiser one with the donkey and the one with the cowboys herding cats. Good times.
p.p.s. Also, it was a feel good story that New Orleans won even though they weren't KWs pick.

Meep in the Wind

Also a little Habanera (from Car-meep) for little CP:

p.s. Habanera is a form of Cuban dance music (popular in the 19th C) following this basic rhythm, which is considered the simplest and most commonly heard of latin rhythms (Boom...ba-bop-bop):

He's Aware of Us!

Rick Mercer (yes THE Rick Mercer) came to good old adrenaline loving Rossland for the Rossland Winter Carnival (113 years young!). Watch the episode on the Mercer Report YouTube channel here. He caught the Olympic torch running through town while he was there too! What jolly fun! Word on the street is he had a false start while attempting the bobsled (but they didn't show that on the episode).

How to seed a pomegranate

This guy is from "food wishes video recipes", he also showed me such techniques as "How debone a chicken wing" but there are a lot of cool recipes on there that I have every intention of trying eventually.

p.s. Little cp LOVES pomegranates! But, what she doesn't love is writing epilogue posts for the blog...

Borden System Words: Manitoba

Before we continue in our quest for Borden words let's have a quick Borden system refresher since it's been a little while. If you recall from last time (just click on the "BSwords" tag link at the bottom of this post and all of them will pop up), the upper North-South Borden blocks represent 2 degrees of latitude and the lower N-S Borden blocks within these, each represent 10 minutes. Since 2 degrees = 120minutes, the only lower N-S Borden blocks available are “a” through “l”. The upper East-West Borden blocks represent 4 degrees of latitude (south of 62 degrees), while the lower Borden blocks continue to represent 10minutes each. Since 4 degrees = 240 minutes, the only lower E-W Borden blocks available are “a” through “x”. Remember that? Good! Another good thing to remember is that the Borden blocks are in alphabetical order going from the Southeast of Canada to the North and West, so AA is in the water at the US border south of Newfoundland, while KW is in far Northwestern BC.

Now on to Manitoba and its 57 words. Bear in mind that the ‘M’ East-West Borden block only runs from ‘a’ through ‘j’ in Manitoba (the rest are in Sask.), and the ‘D’ North-South block only runs from ‘g’ through ‘l’ (the rest would’ve been in the U.S. were the Borden system used there). OK let’s see what we’ve got (FYI blocks EM, GK, and GJ had none):
IM – iamb
HM – heme, hame
GM – game, gamb, gama
FM – feme, fame
DM – dime
IL – ills, iglu, idle
HL – hilt, hill, hila, help, helo, helm, hell, held, halt, halo, halm, hall, half, hale
GL – gilt, gill, gild, gelt, gels, geld, gals, gall, gale, gala
FL – fils, filo, film, fill, file, fila, felt, fell, falx, fall
EL – ells, eels
DL – dill
IK – ilks
HK – hike, hake
FK – fake
EK - elks
DK – dike
HJ – hajj, haji

Did you know that a falx refers to a sickle-shaped structure, a fils is a middle eastern fractionary unit of currency, and hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca? Also, hila is the plural of hilum and refers to the mark or scar on a seed produced by separation from its funicle or the nucleus of a granule of starch.

But it looks like Manitoba gave us a real swear! Hell! Ahhahaha! Wee! Plus, we learned a few new words, which is also good. Go Manitoba! Next we'll look at Ontario...

For lovers of Sesame Street and Ricky Gervais

Cultural evolution in crows?

Crows give chimps a run for their money. That's some smart damn crows!

p.s. another example of smart animal tool use.