This is kinda cool...

I WISH He Was a Beaver

Yes, I'm talking about Justin Bieber.  It seemed like the entire province got "Bieber Fever" yesterday, even the ones who are normally anti-Bieber.  I for one, was not into it.  It was driving me insane.  Call me crazy for not buying into the whole "ooo it's a pop star in Winnipeg" thing--"let's blow this out of proportion and try to find the kid that's polluting our radio waves and Twitter feeds, snap a picture of him and post it on any social media website that will make people jealous"...please.

That was the thing that really got me going yesterday though.  Almost all of the local media outlets telling the public on Twitter to take a picture of Bieber if they see him and they'll be entered to win a prize pack.  So basically you're giving every girl 17 and under in Winnipeg a reason for them to skip school and find the Biebs?  Not a great call if you ask me.

It was the first time I can remember, that our entire city just went mad for a pop star.  You couldn't flip the radio or television station without hearing his name or seeing his face.  I just didn't get it.  I guess I never really went through the whole teen idol/crush thing in my childhood, but should adults really be condoning this?  Some of these girls are just completely infatuated with him.  You watch footage from his concerts and you see girls dry-heaving from crying so hard.  But don't worry, her mom is there standing beside her, smiling, wearing an "I heart Justin" shirt, and swaying back and forth enjoying the concert she paid $300 per ticket for in the nosebleed section.

Thanks to Twitter, I was even getting updates on the teen heartthrob's trip to Winnipeg.  "OMG just saw Justin's bus in Portage La Prairie..OMG!!!"

Oh well, I guess I just can't and never will catch the "Beav--", "I mean "Bieber Fever".

How About Some Originality?

This week iLurrned how hard it is to actually find an original idea for a halloween costume. 

With only 25 days to go before the holiday where kids get to do some door-to-door candy panhandling and adults get to dress up and look like either morons or slutty morons, I am realizing once again how difficult it is to find an original custume.  Not only original, but a costume in general.  Last year my girlfriend and I went as Napoleon Dynamite and Deb from the 2004 classic, Napoleon Dynamite.  I know what you're thinking--not that original.  Well I've waited 8 years to to don that costume because the entire three years after that movie was released, there was at least one other person that was wearing that costume at whichever party I was at.  It was a well-seasoned costume for 2011.

This year we've been tossing around many ideas, but none all that original.  The best ones are always the ones where at first you're not actually sure what it is, but once they fill you in you realize "that could be the best thing I've ever seen."  For example, one year my friend painted his face and hands black, wore some all black under armour, black tighs and black shoes, clipped an iPod on his tights with ear buds in his ears, and there you have it--he was an iPod commercial circa 2003.

I've never really been a fan of the all-in-one packaged costume you can get at party stuff or online.  Half the fun in getting your costume is digging through every Value Village in the city to put the thing together. 

Hopefully the next few weeks of brainstorming will be more successful than the first week of October.  We currently have three ideas on the board and I wouldn't call any of them original.  If you have any ideas for great couples costumes let me know, because I'm already burned out!

Vermin and Porcelain

This past Monday, I experienced something that not many people have or ever will in their life.  It has to do with porcelain and vermin.

I woke up on that misty fall Monday morning, the way I usually wake up on misty fall Monday mornings--slow.  However, my shower didn't go the way they usually do.  Just as I stepped in, there was a hard and constant knocking on the bathroom door.  So, I shut the shower off and hollered "What the eff do you want?" ( not really, I was more polite).  It was my mother freaking out.  She told me to come upstairs quick and it sounded like she was crying.  So of course, being the great son that I am, I turned off the shower dried off and marched my tired ass upstairs.  Needless to say, it was a great morning so far.

When I got into our kitchen upstairs, my mother was pacing back and forth with her hand covering her face.  I was starting to get worried.

"What?"  I asked.
"Go look in our toilet" she replied.  At this point I was starting to think my dad left a gift more my mom in the bathroom before he left.  I was thinking, "I've never seen/smelled one that bad, mom."  It wasn't a number two.  It was a squirrel!  Alive!  Swimming in the toilet!  I shut the lid quickly and ran back into the kitchen in disbelief.

"How the hell did that get in there?"  I asked.
"I have no idea, do you think dad put it in there?"...yeah mom.  Dad wanted to screw with your mind so he trapped a squirrel, snuck it into the house and plopped it in the toilet all before he had to leave for work at 6 a.m.
"I don't think so mom."
"What do we do?"

I couldn't figure out how it would of got in there or how we should go about getting it out.  My mom was worried about getting it out alive, but I didn't see that happening.  All that kept running through my mind was the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  Except this would be worse, because this squirrel would be a wet squirrel.  So I ran and quickly hopped on the Google machine while my mom was trying to phone my dad every ten seconds.

This is what iLurrn'd

The toilet drains into a pipe which is a vertical pipe that goes through the roof.  You can usually see them from the outside.  They're little black pipes sticking out.  These pipes are big enough for a squirrel to fit into and in most cases there is some type of vent shield that protects the pipe from squirrels and anything else that can get on your roof.  We obviously didn't have one.

There's also a valve that usually prevents those critters and/or plants from getting in the pipe, but sometimes if it's small enough or positions its body right, it can get through.  Once through, it will most likely make its way through the largest exit pipe--the one that leads to the toilet.

Sadly, the little guy got tired of swimming and drowned, but we did give him a proper burial.  We also have put a Critter Quitter on our drainage pipe and will (hopefully) never have this problem again

But I'll leave you with two examples of how this could have turned out worse.

What is iLurrn?

I'm an idiot--I mean a student, so I'm always learning new things.  Some things beneficial to me, others not so much.  This blog will help you learn all of the stupid things that I learn from week-to-week.  Some things will make you think, "hey, I didn't know that!"  Others will make you think "hey, I didn't want to know that!"  Either way I promise you won't regret reading it.  This is will be a good ol' time.  I'll leave you with a teaser on what my first real blog post will entail.  Enjoy!