Do you remember AGT?
AGT was a Crown corporation in the Canadian province of Alberta. Its full name was "Alberta Government Telephones."
Do you remember BCTel?
BCTel was a Crown corporation in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Its full name was "BCTel."
AGT and BCTel were the phone companies in Alberta and B.C. They made sure there was dial tone when you picked up the handset. They charged you a lot of money to talk to people in Zambia and Moose Jaw. Then one day the governments of Alberta and B.C. decided they didn't want to run phone companies anymore and sold off AGT and BCTel.
It was a recipe for loneliness and despair. But, happily, AGT and BCTel found each other and saved each other from heartbreak. They got married and became one flesh. And they changed their name to "Telus."
Today Telus is a big-ass phone company with ambitions of becoming a really big-ass phone company. They still do dial tone in Alberta and B.C., but they now also do cellphones in the rest of the country.
A few years ago Telus swallowed and assimilated a little cellphone company called "Clearnet" and stole their very clever branding, which mostly involved cute little ladybugs and flowers and chameleons. This is why there are now pigs and frogs and lizards all over your TV. Telus is trying to win your business with them.
It is probably not working.
Where is the evidence that it is not working, you ask? Here it is once more, for your reference:
Telus just recently started a new approach. Instead of using critters to sell you their cellphones, They have made the cellphones themselves look like toilet seats.
That will definitely work. I am totally buying one of those, let me tell you.
Posted by Bret at 09:50 PM | Comments (4)
People who are well-read like to try out new words and phrases. This is beacause trying out new words and phrases is good nerdy fun, and also because it is satisfying to have the crowd go "oooooh."
I am not well-read, but I still like trying out new words and phrases. For a while I thought it was funny to say, about people who were not interested, that they "couldn't give a wet fart."
Unfortunately, that made the other trustees on the school board think I was vulgar and unrestrained, so I had to stop. I still sometimes talk like that in private, though.
Not in that kind of private. Now you are the vulgar one. Go eat some soap and try to think of gentle and pleasant things, like daffodils.
Now, back to trying out new words and phrases.
Doing the sort of reading I like to do, I often encounter the phrase "drop trou." Here it is used in a sentence:
"When the bells rang, the vicar dropped trou and showed the congregation his date."
To drop trou is to unbuckle one's buckle and to unzip one's zipper and to lower one's waistband to somewhere around the ankles. It may or may not involve mooning. So you can see why "dropping trou" is a really super useful expression.
A few weeks ago I used the expression out loud for the first time.
"Look at that guy on the dock," I said, "It think he's about to drop troo and jump in the water."
"Haw!" said the assembled throng. "That's 'trow,' you brainless wonder, not 'troo.'"
"No," I said.
"Yep," said the assembled throng.
"It's just my Canadian accent."
"No, you are a brainless wonder."
"Rats."
...
Today, I appeal to you, the internet public. How about we all begin to pronounce it "troo"? We will all find the change immensely satisfying.
Why should we all consider this? Well, once upon a time there was a bawdy song about a kilted Scotsmen and the lassies who asked him where his troosers were. It was a very good song indeed and it made everyone happy.
Then some brainless wonders decided it was too obscure for the US public and changed it, in their recording of the song, to "trousers."
It is payback time. Are you with me, internet public?
Posted by Bret at 01:05 PM | Comments (3)
The other day in the newspaper we got a catalogue from a company called "Hedonics."
Yes, that is a tawdry and suggestive name for a mail-order firm. Their products probably all come wrapped in brown paper. No judgment, but if I were the mother of the person who started that company, I would totally be embarrassed.
At least that is what I thought when I saw the name. Unfortunately, on the inside there was not anything tawdry. Instead there were a bunch of gizmos. Here are some examples:
- A contact lens washing machine.
- A pair of blue sunglasses to help you see your golf ball when you've hit it into the shubs.
- A Wine Breather.
- (A Wine Breather bubbles air through a fresh bottle of wine so you won't have to slurp it to get all the flavour.)
- Yes. Oh, for the love of Pete.
- Indeed.
- Shut up, stupid pretentious Hedonics catalogue.
It was a grave disappointment. Page after page of idiot gimmicks designed to make rich people all sweaty, and not a single tawdry photograph of a lady in her undershorts. What a stupid waste of a name, I thought.
Then.
On the last page, tucked away in a discreet corner, this headline:
"Stress Relief At Your Fingertips!"
Along with it, the photo you saw at the top of this very posting. Here it is again, to refresh your memory:
Underneath it there was another photo. Here it is:
I am not normally a skeptical person, but I frankly had my doubts that anyone would really use this device to massage a headache out of her temples. That's why they invented codeine, right?
So.
There was only one possible explanation.
It was not really a temple massager at all but was instead meant to go in your pants and tickle you on your bits.
For confirmation, I turned to the world's most reliable source of salacious and titillating content, the internet.
Aha! I was right! The temple massager is totally not for your temples!
What is the lesson here? The lesson here is that if you are very very rich, so rich that you can buy a machine to breathe your wine for you, you will be shy and reserved and incapable of just plain old going out to buy a bits-tickling machine because what would the neighbours think?
The other lesson here is that if I were the mother of the person who started the Hedonics company, I would once again be totally embarrassed.
Then again, my mother is probably totally embarrassed right now too.
Haunting how everything comes full circle, isn't it?
Posted by Bret at 09:42 PM | Comments (1)
Three weeks ago I went to a grocery store in the scary part of town.
It is the scary part of town because the men there drive their red cars too fast and put too much pomade in their hair.
It is also the scary part of town because the women there wear their trousers low and their undershorts high. And their undershorts are made of these totally thin insubstantial strips of cloth. So really the word "undershorts" is something of a misnomer. There is a dedicated word for thin strippy undershorts that are visible above the trouser waistline but for the moment it escapes me.
The point is, it is the scary part of town. But the scary part of town is where the inexpensive grocery store is, so that is why I went there. The inexpensive grocery store does not bother with:
- fresh fish, or;
- staff who put your groceries in bags for you, or;
- milk that has not already begun turning into paneer, or;
- any of that bourgeois frippery.
They sell apples and white bread. They have a whole aisle for individual servings of pudding that do not require refrigeration. Their Miracle Whip outsells their mayonnaise six-to-one.
If you want something to put your groceries in they will give you a dirty wet cardboard box that once held cans of tomatoes and then briefly held broken jars of baby food but has totally had a good wipe with a paper towel so quit your whining, you effete little pansy.
It is a very tough place, the inexpensive grocery store in the scary part of town. Want to know how tough it is?
They sell pickled shallots from Iran. Iran! I know!
Three weeks ago in the inexpensive grocery store in the scary part of town I bought some pickled shallots from Iran.
Then I brought them home and opened the jar and ate six of them. They were pretty good.
The end of the story needs a little work, doesn't it?
Posted by Bret at 11:38 AM | Comments (3)In a few moments Kate and Safety Carrot and I will climb into the Silver Bum and drive north into the forested hinterland of Muskoka.
We are totally going to a cottage. Even though it is the second weekend in October and even though you are supposed to stay home and eat sage-flavoured giblets when it is the second weekend in October.
So yes, we are sticking it to The Man. Take that, Man!
...
Have you ever wondered just what this "it" is, with which one sticks The Man?
Me neither.
On the bright side, we will probably get a chance to write another nice toilet poem for our hosts.
Posted by Bret at 01:12 PM | Comments (1)