This airline seems to have it right

Their livery is an absolute blast.

The above is their "Camo" plane.

 

Then, there is "flying 101".

Check out the rest of Kulula airlines' funky fleet here.

And now for something completely different ...

Once upon a time there were three sub-lieutenants and a midshipman in HMS Ark Royal. Last night at sea after a long deployment, an OOW notebook filled to the last page and the "last day crazies" start to set in.



Why wouldn't you want to join The Andrew after that.

Advice to aquarists...

Farting turtles can ruin a night's sleep.

Staff at the Great Yarmouth Sea Life Centre in Norfolk give turtles a seasonal treat of brussel sprouts at Christmas which provide a healthy dose of vitamins, minerals and fibre.

However, the turtles, like humans, are prone to heavy bouts of flatulence after eating the vegetables.

The interesting part is that this has happened before... just down the road.

Arh! Ye miserble swabs!

Yea, it be talk like a pirate day. The ghost of Edward Teach, the FSM and a host o' privateers call upon all ye landsmen, non-matelots, jetty rats and Whitehall scum t' join in an' parlay in th' best form o' Cap'n Rogers (may 'is clean-picked bones rest among th' crabs).

We 'ere 'll be makin' a change or two to th' sidebar for th' rest o' th' day.

Is that bear spray on your breath?

There are times when that could be an appropriate question.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to reader Chris for sending a postable version. (Click to enlarge)

Captain Splash

Perhaps you need to know the star of this video to appreciate it but I believe, once I've given you the background and circumstances, you'll see the humour.

The man in the video is the captain of a very swept-up, very high-tech, very fast coastal passenger vessel operating out of northern Vancouver Island. We all know him as Captain Bill and those of us who know him can attest to his astute knowledge, unquestionable skill and a razor-sharp wit. I can state, without reservation, that I have learned countless valuable lessons from this man. His safety record as a seafarer is impeccable.



Thank the sea gods that riding a bike wasn't one of them.

Captain Bill was down at his vessel retrieving a battery charger which he needed at home. The vessel's berth is a long way down that narrow float so he rode his bike down to the ship. By his account, he was proceeding down the dock and wanted to gear down to get up the ramp you see in the distance. The gear shift was on the left handlebar and you can see that his left hand is rather occupied carrying the battery charger.

So, he reached over with his right hand to shift gears. Physics took over.

Now, the operator of the dock in the picture had recently installed a security camera system. Bill was unaware of this fact at the time and went home to rinse off the salt water. (That didn't save the battery charger). While Bill would have liked to have kept this low-key and below the radar, some members of his "company" thought there might have been some video of the actual event. Sure enough, a replay of the previous evening's security capture was extracted from the hard drive and there was a perfect image of Bill exerting forces on the direction of the bicycle into the harbour.

Feel free to comment on the part you think is the funniest. Personally, I'm torn between the "hands-on-hips" while looking back into the harbour, the resigned but purposeful "walk-away-leaving-a-wet-trail" or the second look back at "the scene".

You want a mouse? THIS is a mouse!

I know at least one blogger who is going to think this is very cool. Found this in the cabin at Cap'n Dyke, Lesbian Pirate Queen & Rogue Blogger, where we proudly serve as the Canukistani member in The Mound.

I'm just going out to work in the shed

Heh! And that takes on a whole new meaning when "The Shed" is more than an accumulation of garden tools and old saws.

Yes, it's Shed Week in the UK and the judges have announced the 2008 Shed of the Year.

Tim from Sudbury in Suffolk, England took first prize with his "Rugby Pub" shed.

Google is either very green....

... has a warped sense of humour or they're trying to kill you.



Take a trip with Google maps from the centre of downtown Sydney, NSW, Australia to the centre of Victoria, BC, Canada.

Pay special attention to instruction number 6.

Worse though... they expect you to go to all the way down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, into Puget Sound, into Seattle and then double back all the way to Port Angeles to catch the ferry.

Original idea stolen from A Welsh View.

The bestest poll evah!

The ever industrious balbulican has scoured the tOObs for commentary on the BCHR/MacLean's/Mark Steyn confrontation. Not just any comment, mind you. Comment from the right.

As anyone who has cleaned out a long unattended bilge pipe will know, there is normally a lot of ordure to endure.

Well now you get to decide.

Here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for - your opportunity to vote for the most hilariously overblown, hysterically exaggerated description of the BC Human Rights/MacLeans Tribunal.

Yes, I have my personal favourite. Not wishing to influence your choices however, I'll just keep it too myself.

Go! Read and vote.

A job at the cineplex, making minimum wage...

And someone tells you to hang the "Upcoming Features" posters. Suddenly, you're job isn't quite as boring as it used to be.

You may click to... enlarge.

For all you cat people

And there's no place to put the anti-snoring strips.

Maintenance.

Tripping through The Woodshed we find The Rev. Paperboy, with a freshly sandblasted and remodeled blog getting his monitor screen cleaned from the inside.

Need a drinking cup in a hurry?

This is an interesting idea. Although, you have to be carrying a piece of paper.

Stand off at The Woodshed continues...

The Rev. Paperboy is weakening. During the night (east of the International Dateline and west of Greenwich) The Rev. sneaked in a crew and put new vinyl siding on the blog. Yesterday, despite heavy negotiations, The Woodshed continued to be held hostage.

I think with enough pressure we can finish this today. Once we've got The Rev. suitably rummed-up, we can all return to current events... like Brian "With Bells On" Mulroney getting those bells rung for him and crawling back into the sewer system.

Of course, The Rev. is a real "Rev" (has his journeyman preacher ticket) and if he hadn't been holed-up trying to camouflage The Woodshed we could have used him on another mission. It seems Roger Moore dressed up as a conservative Christian minister (they have a uniform?!) and breached the "security" of Ben Stein's piece of "God dun it" drivel.

We need to get The Rev. back on the keyboard. Let's face it, we have Canadian finance minister, Jim "Would I Lie To You" Flaherty, handing out $25 million for the 2010 Olympic torch run. The up side of that is, thanks to Flaherty there will be lots of people with curbside seats. No... they won't have to arrive early to get a good spot. That's where they live.

So, one more day should do it. Save The Rev. from himself.

The newly wed and nearly dead... Not anymore!

I've lived in the Victoria, BC, area a few times. Aside from the days when the intersection of Douglas and Yates, known as "Pusser's Corner" back in the day, was alive with sailors in their "number two" rig, the city used to have a reputation for being extraordinarily quiet.

Things, so to speak, seem to have changed.

A naked couple have been arrested after allegedly having sex in a moving car.

Their highway hi-jinks startled motorists in [Victoria] British Columbia, Canada - who called police to expose the bizarre traffic violation.

A second nude woman was spotted, but appeared to have been dropped off at her own home before officers could swoop.

After hearing about the romp on the Trans Canada Highway, police in Victoria traced the car's owner through reports of his licence plate.

When they arrived at his home, they arrested a man and a woman in their twenties - but were told the second woman had been taken home already.

Victoria Police Constable Kris Rice said: "There were some reports that they seemed to be wanting attention from other drivers as they engaged in sexual acts.

"Both were determined to be in the nude."

The woman was taken to a hospital for psychiatric assessment, while the driver will likely only face such charges as driving without due care and attention, because police did not witness any sexual acts.

You might note that rather than take the story from the local Victoria newspaper, the link is to a British news site. Global coverage. Better than the Olympics.

Durex does cucumbers

This Durex™ commercial was made for British television.



It's a cultural thing.

Apparently, it has a taste not unlike chicken.

Breaking news! Nut farmers on the Saanich Peninsula near Victoria, British Columbia are faced with an epidemic of Grey Squirrels.

Illegal transportation of Grey Squirrels in live catch traps from urban centres such as Victoria are contributing significantly to the spread of this population up island and throughout the Vancouver area . BC Wildlife Branch lists grey squirrels as a species that is known to destroy property and is detrimental to native wildlife. Nut Growers on the Saanich peninsula near Victoria are inundated with Grey Squirrels and farmers are facing massive losses of nut crops. At the Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve in Duncan Grey Squirrels are damaging bird boxes, killing young birds, eating acorns and are impacting on the overall ecological health of the site. Nipping off the new shoots of the Garry Oak tree when it sprouts is having a devastating impact on the Gary Oak population which is already Red Listed by the British Columbia Ministry of Environment. These squirrels have now been seen and captured in Nanaimo.

Nasty little suckers, aren't they? Mind you, I've always felt that squirrels, the urban kind anyway, were little more than rats with good public relations.

What to do? Well, damned if the Times Online doesn't offer a timely and practical solution.

Pan braised squirrels

Ingredients

4 skinned gutted squirrels, feet removed;

8ml olive oil;

300g dandelion leaves;

300g young sow thistles;

100g young dock leaves;

150g hairy bittercress;

150g nettle tops;

3 medium onions;

100g wild chervil;

80g dill;

a few lemon balm leaves;

juice of one large orange;

pine nuts;

toasted sesame seeds;

dried apricots;

1 tablespn balsamic vinegar;

1/2 teaspn curry powder;

1/4 teaspn turmeric;

1/8th teaspn cinnamon;

1 small chilli;

salt and pepper

Method

Sweat the onions in the olive oil. Boil a pan of water, add dock leaves, sow thistle and dandelion leaves. Boil for 30 secs to 1 min. Strain and discard water. Add this, 3 cups water and all other ingredients to the meat pan. Cover and simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally

Does anybody know what wine would go best with that?

Learn to fly in your living room.

For those looking to take their flight simulator software to the next level, this is for you. This little unit gives you "feel".

Made by FMS Flight Motion Simulators in Kelowna, British Columbia, the system can be purchased with all th goodies. You just hook it all up and you're flying... sort of.

The whole kit costs around $3000. You provide your own computer and monitors.

Graph your daylight

Via the Chimpanzee Refuge, this is a cool little device. You simply insert your country, province/state and city and it produces a series of graphs describing daylight at any given time of the year, sunrise and sunset, maximum solar flux and angle of the Sun.

You might find some of the results a little surprising.