Last weekend I was out of town and heard that there was a Warriors football game on TV, so I flipped the channels until I caught the game. It was great to see a network covering the game, but during the commercial break, I saw an ad about UW. An AD! I know, the network was just trying to increase of the exposure of UW (and the University of Ottawa), but it still felt weird to see UW selling itself on TV.
Sorry! I mumbled too much there. I have to admit that August was not a very eventful month, but there were still a few odd things that happened during that time.
Internet auctions can be a fun places to buy/sell items. From time to time a valuable item is put on auction and often the only people making a bid are those making the joke bids. Usually the prices of the items put on auction are driven to outrageously high levels, but sometimes the opposite occurs. A Chinese man decided to sell his car and put it up for auction on the Internet. I don't know if he put a starting price, but I doubt he did. After the bidding closed, he found out that the highest bid for his car was $22. Before you think that the car is a Hot Wheel, I should tell you that it is a full-sized vehicle. Seeing that his car only fetched $22, the owner refused the transaction and the "buyer" decided to go to the courts to claim his purchase. The state of the case is unknown. On one hand, the seller has the right to demand more for his car (he probably is getting 0.1% of the car's purchase price, or less). On the other hand, he should know the rules of on-line auctioning before diving in.
There isn't much variety when it comes to names of the months. Most of the names of months came from 2000 years ago. (Granted, changing names of months can lead to chaos, confusion, and a clerical nightmare.) There are many perks for being a head of state, but I didn't know that changing names of the months was one of them until now. The President of Turkmenistan recently renamed the month of January after himself (I guess my birthday is now in the month of the president). This was not the first time he'd done something like this. He had previously renamed months to words such as "The Flag," "Independent," and ""Mother." You probably think that he is a megalomaniac whose ego is taller than Mount Everest, and you may be right (I think). I don't think many of us will have months named after them (after all, there are only 12 months a year). Well, at least I still have the abbreviation of July-August-September-October-November in my name.
Many of you probably had dreams of making it big in the music scene and showing off your musical ability to a crowd of screaming fans. "Talent" search shows such as Popstars and American Idol have attracted many aspiring musicians to show off their skills. These contests may garner a huge amount of attention, but the winners are no world champions. In Oulu, Finland, artists can show off their "skills" and be crowned world champion. Guess which instrument the contestants play? Nothing. Really, nothing. This is the world championship of air guitar. The participants actually have to compete in regional competitions and spend months honing their air guitar "skills". The prize for winning is ... a real guitar! So if you are an air guitar player who practices in the basement, get out in the open and show off your skills. Who knows? Maybe we have a star in the making.
Many people are willing to do anything to get tickets for performances of their favourite musicians. Sometimes radio stations offer contests in which contestants have to repeat a phrase or collect items in order to win. ["KBBL's gonna gimme something stupid!" — Simon] Some of these contests can swamp you, literally. A Regina radio station recently held a contest with a pair of tickets to an Elton John concert as the first prize. All participants had to do was bring in more grasshoppers to the station than anyone else. Over 100 people participated, many brought in hundreds of grasshoppers, but the winner brought in about 38 000 grasshoppers. There was an infestation of grasshopper in Saskatchewan this summer, but it definitely took the winner a lot of time (and swing-and-misses) to catch so many grasshoppers. But the one who truly deserved those tickets is the one who counted all the grasshoppers (maybe there is none).
Jason "the Screamer" Lau
Does anyone else care about these?