Siberian Huskies at the Movies
Dogs are going places. In case you haven't noticed, there is a movie out about Siberian Huskies doing typical Husky things, like thriving in brutal cold weather and being smart, strong and heroic. The movie, Eight Below, centers around sled dogs that have to fend for themselves in Antartica's frozen tundra when abandoned by a team of researchers during a severe storm. The "Eight" in the title refers to the eight canines in the movie, not the temperature which is probably minus 172, where Celsius and Fahrenheit no longer matter.

This magnificent tale of courage is based on a true story, and that shouldn't surprise anyone who knows dogs and huskies in particular. You are not going to find cats (ha!) even try to survive the California outdoors. Maybe penguins are tough, but all they do is march, then stand there all winter and breed. The amazing cast include six siberians and two malamutes, Maya, Shadow, Max, Dewey, Buck, Old Jack, Shorty and Truman, and a few human supporting actors... whose names I forgot, Jerry and Davis something. Fortunately people are mostly off the screen so the dogs can do their thing being charismatic and brave.

Eight Below was top dog at the box office last week and will probably stay there all year. The current competition is a romantic chick flick "Date Movie," a pathetic remake of "The Pink Panther" and a man-monkey story in "Curious George." If there is any justice in this world, Shadow should win Best Actor at the Oscars this year. After all, he combines the rugged looks of Clint Eastwood, the exotic charm of R2-D2 and the legs of Sharon Stone. All four of them, unshaved (Shadow, that is, not Sharon. I think).
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:35 AM 8 comments

 
Siberian Huskies at the Olympics
It took a long time, but the Olympics have finally decided to let the dogs in. No, we are not talking about Bode Miller and we are not talking about dogsledding as a winter sport at the Torino Games.

What happened is that Daron Rahlves, a member of the U.S. Ski Team, and his wife Michelle, have a Siberian Husky named Chevy. The dog is their constant companion so it's natural that he would go to Turin also. Since they are staying in a motor home outside the Olympic Village, there is enough room for the couple and dog and no one is complaining. Officially Chevy is not a member of the squad, but he has an authentic badge issued by the U.S. Olympic Committee with his dog grin picture on it and labeled "Chevy Rahlves -- Security/Skiing." Most of the time though, he gets through security gates and checkpoints with just the usual patented Husky face lick. Click on the picture for extra nose action.

Chevy tried to enter the giant slalom event last week but was kicked off when the Americans caught him fraternizing with the Swedish Babe Ski Patrol. That doesn't bother him much though - he's still got the same number of medals as that other guy Bode.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:01 AM 8 comments

 
A Sticky Solution
People sometimes laugh at duct tape as the universal repair tool for men everywhere, but really, what would you do without duct tape?

Here is a case in point. A couple of German backpackers in New Zealand decided to buy a Toyota van for their travels around the country. After driving over 200 miles from Christchurch to Marlborough, they had to stop this week at a repair garage when the windshield suddenly collapsed. The shop folks were stunned to find that the roof pillars had completely rusted away, and supporting the van roof was nothing but a combination of putty, aluminum foil, kitchen steel wool and toilet paper painted over.

With help from the shop manager, the tourists were able to locate the former owner who agreed to refund half the selling price of the van, which was about US$ 850. Obviously the owner felt that he had stuffed at least $400 worth of toilet paper into holes in the roof pillars. I'm sure you realize by now that if that van had been fixed properly with just a $1 roll of duct tape, none of this series of unfortunate events would have occurred. Either that or they should travel by dog sled the next time. Duct tape and sled dogs are some of the few things guaranteed to be indestructible.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:02 AM 4 comments

 
Japanese DMV
Complaining about the Department of Motor Vehicles seems to be as American as arguing Coke vs. Pepsi (I dislike both, so sue me -- OK, that's American too). But, if you hate DMV that much, why don't you get out of the country and move to Japan? Seriously, you'll like their system much better.

Last month, a driver's license office in Fukuoka Prefecture in southern Japan mistakenly showed a porn video during a lecture on driving laws. Japanese drivers are required to visit the center and take a refresher class in order to renew their driver's licenses. About 1600 people were listening to the lecture in nine separate rooms at the time, and not a single person objected. Either they were dozing off or they were surprised to learn new, unusual techniques for blowing the horn and making an emergency detour.

An official at the center has apologized profusely and said that measures have been taken so that mistake will never happen again. From now on, the director will personally watch every DMV video himself to make sure it has no entertainment value whatsoever.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:37 AM 5 comments

 
You Lovable Huggable Tree
Because it's a brainy school, Stanford University doesn't have "ferocious Huskies" or "avenging Indians" for mascots. Instead, their mascot is a tree -- seriously, a redwood tree, based on the city of Palo Alto where it is located (The city's name means "tall tree" in Spanish). At football and basketball games, they have a woman dressed as a tree prance around as the band plays. It's hard to look menacing when you are a tree, so there is a lot of prancing and jumping, and not much else.

That's what you would think. Now the woman, Erin Lashnits, a senior student in biology, has been fired for being drunk on the job. Supposedly she was taking drinks from a flask inside the tree during a basketball game two weeks ago, and police said they could see the flask under the costume. They gave her a breath analyzer test and found that her blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit for driving. It didn't matter that trees don't drink and drive. A spokesman for the band said that "the tree's movement was consistent with that of someone who's had something to drink." Stanford people must know their trees better than most of us. Their decision was final: The tree was axed, and told to "leave."

I feel bad for Lashnits. After all, she was taking her job seriously to be like a tree, and obviously she needed to be watered. I am thinking to invite her to be a mascot for my household. The dogs are all in favor.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:33 AM 8 comments

 
All That Glitters
The Japanese seem to be fascinated with Olympic food. First McDonald's Japan introduced Torino-themed food such as cheesy potato balls and a chicken hamburger with tomato sauce. Now an Italian restaurant in Hokkaido, northern Japan has started selling a spaghetti (that makes it Italian) topped with a sauce containing pure gold flakes (that gives it an Olympic flavor). The idea is to show support for the nine athletes from the nearby Tokachi region competing at the Winter Games.

How noble. Each serving gets a sprinkling of about 0.1 grams of pure gold, and sells for 1600 yen (that's US $14 for you metric-challenged readers). Since gold is currently selling at roughly 10,000 yen per gram, that means each dish has 1000 yen worth of gold and only 600 yen of spaghetti.

By my calculations based on the cost of food over there, that works out to three strands of noodles, a teaspoon of tomato sauce, and since this is Japanese spaghetti, two slices of cucumber, five peas and a sprig of parsley. The chef, Naruto Azuma, worries that he will lose money if demand is too high. He just might have to cut down to three peas, and drop the parsley. Or he can buy a few pipe fittings from the hardware store and give each customer several shavings of bronze instead. That's what you get for not finishing first.

And here is this blog's contribution to our Olympic athletes:


Click on cartoon for bigger donuts
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:05 AM 9 comments

 
Numbskull
Robert Peatie from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, was arrested last week for allegedly taking morphine from his mother's intravenous system just after she died. A nurse said that she walked into his mother's room at Cape Cod Hospital and found him standing next to the IV stand, trying to squeeze morphine from the drip bag into his water bottle. He asked for a minute more, and fled when she asked him to leave. Police charged him with larceny of a controlled substance and possession of morphine.

A judge has ordered Peatie held on $2,000 bail after a hearing on Wednesday in Barnstable Superior Court. His next scheduled court date is Feb. 17. I hope the judge shows some leniency. After all, poor Robert has just lost his mother and is feeling very numb.

On a different but very important subject, the cartoon below is being presented in honor of the Yukon Quest, also known as "Toughest Sled Dog Race in the World," which starts today in Fairbanks, Alaska and covers 1000 miles to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory during the depths of Arctic winter.


Click on cartoon for bigger dog
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:29 AM 7 comments

 
A Giant Sucking Sound
The Sewer and Water District for the city of Star, near Boise, Idaho, asked all children in town to simultaneously flush their toilets yesterday at exactly 2 pm, to help them test the capacity of the newly built sewage treatment plant.

For the past few weeks, the District has been giving away packets of red Kool-Aid which they wanted the kids to empty into the toilets just before flushing. By their estimates, a red surge should hit the treatment facility 30 minutes later, and if things work as designed, the water should come out clean, clear and completely potable on the outlet side. At stake is whether the $5.2 million plant upgrade is capable of supporting the town growth, from just 650 people in 1990 to more than 3000 now.

Since The Big Flush of Idaho was completed only yesterday, there is no final conclusion yet on the results. But I don't know why they went through all that trouble. First, it was a silly and dangerous idea to suddenly move so much water. It could have shifted the center of gravity of the Earth, changing the spin speed and accelerating global warming. I heard that our planet is really fragile. Second, if they really must test the sewer plant, they could just wait until Superbowl today. If the plant can take the tidal wave of beer flushes at half-time, then they can be sure that it can handle anything. Or they can simply ask us dogs. We would have been happy to tell them to not worry, the toilet water is perfectly drinkable even without Kool-Aid and without treatment.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 12:05 AM 9 comments

 
Il Mac Grande Terribile
To celebrate the upcoming Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, McDonald's Japan plans to launch three "Italian-themed" food selections during a one-month promotion period starting next week.

The first is an espresso-flavored milkshake, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. The second is bite-sized cheesy-potato balls. My guess is that it is french fry paste formed into little balls and topped with Cheez Whiz -- at least that's what I would do if someone asked me to make cheesy potato balls. The third offering is a tomato-stewed chicken hamburger. Now I don't understand why there is chicken in hamburger (although I suppose it's better than soy), and why some people seem to think that just putting tomato into anything makes it Italian. Maybe they should throw in a few cucumber slices and call it Japanese-Italian "mixed" hamburger. As an aside, that was one thing I learned while in Japan, that "mixed" is the Japanese word for cucumber. There is "mixed" spaghetti, "mixed" pizza, "mixed" sandwich. Unless they also add corn, in which case it is called "mixed special."

Which goes to show that Japanese food is weird, but Italian food is weirder. The Italians eat cheesy balls and chicken hamburgers. I hope they don't get mad cow bird flu.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 3:23 AM 3 comments

 
Calvin!
Click on cartoon to enlarge

- posted by Woofwoof @ 10:04 PM 5 comments