Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

Oh here’s something else I forgot. Marlo convinced me to get a DeviantART account (which I pronounce Devian Tart even though there’s no room or time for spaces in this crazy world), which I think was a pretty good move and she also helped me upload a bunch of pictures so she gets extra hugs. It’s amusing to see what other people comment on my various drawings and just my site in general, more so when they are ESL and I can’t understand what they’re trying to say.

Here’s my gallery: http://torenatkinson.deviantart.com/gallery/

Still more news:

Toyota announced that it would open a new $800 million plant in Ontario. The company turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies in the United States because, when compared to Canadians, U.S. workers are too hard to train, often illiterate, and expensive to insure.

A Japanese man recited 83,431 digits of pi.

A member of Britain’s parliament identified himself as a Jedi, and A woman in Florida won the right to bare her breasts in public.

In New Zealand a baby boy undergoing penis-enlargement treatment was accidentally given ten times the recommended dose of testosterone by his nurse, causing the boy to become angry and irritable and to develop pubic hair. A doctor warned that the baby might also suffer from painful erections, but that problem had yet to arise.

President George W. Bush gave a nationally televised speech about the war in Iraq to an audience of soldiers. Bush, who served in the Air National Guard, said there was “no higher calling” than military service and mentioned the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks five times. After the speech, there was some question as to whether the soldiers had clapped enough.[The New York Times] The U.S. Army, having increased the maximum enlistment age from thirty-four to thirty-nine and the maximum age for officer candidate school from twenty-nine to forty-two, having offered $20,000 more for college per soldier, and having lowered its recruitment goal for this June by more than one thousand as compared to the previous year, announced that it had exceeded its June recruitment goal by 507 soldiers.[CNN.com][USA Today][The New York Times]

Scientists in Pittsburgh killed a dog, then resurrected it hours later with fresh blood.

China decided to outlaw sexual harassment,[BBC News]

In Kota Belud, Malaysia, a Kadazandusun Chief Bobolian urged people to stop dressing animals in costumes because doing so offends the spirits and could turn a longhouse to stone.[Daily Express]

A sixty-million-year-old venomous mouse fossil was discovered.

Two Brooklyn, New York, teenagers were arrested for killing a fifteen-year-old boy for his iPod.[The New York Times]

One thing I forgot to mention about my bike ride with Marlo on the weekend is that we stopped into the SPCA to look at cats, just for fun. There were definitely some cuties there. But, Kodos is still my favourite soft furry funny retarded noisy cat. For now.

This morning I had a dream that I was back in high school, but I was an extrovert instead of an introvert, without any of my inhibitions. So much that I just sang and danced as I walked down the halls, and the teachers hated me. And if I liked a girl, I swept her off her feet instead of keeping it to myself like I actually did. So that was a fun dream.

Last night Graeme and Marlo and Geisel and Geoff came over and after watching a bit of Eddie Izzard ‘Dress to Kill’ we played Heroquest and everyone died. The quest specifically said “work together” but they refused and they got there just desserts with whip topping and a cherry. Then I took photos for my zombie vs S.W.A.T. painting, which will be fun.

In my many hours of daytime TV I see a lot of commercials. I hate commercials, as you all know. The mute button is wearing out on our remote control. However, some things get through. I’ve noticed a few trends this summer:

1. Commercials that start out with “Summer’s here and it’s time for…” buying our product. Kentucky Fried Chicken and I think Red Lobster or some steak house are the two main guilty parties. What a pointless tag line. Do people only eat chicken in summer?

2. Mr Devo’s music from Life Aquatic is being bastardized. Case in point: the Skittles and Nestea commercials.

3. Um…I guess that’s it. Except that commercials stink. The only one I don’t mind is the Holiday Inn commercial with the guy who has his best ideas in the shower. “Proving that my client is innocent!” in court wearing only a bath towel. I can never forgive commercials for their cleverness, but I find the actor quite adorable.

Oh and fucking babies running around to the Bach (?) symphony with the words “No… no no.. no no no no no no! You can’t…you won’t…change my diaper now…” makes me run from where ever I am in the apartment to turn it off.

Amber is the daughter of my ex-employer, The Book Man, in Chilliwack, which she now…I’ll say manages. We dated for a very short time, and remained friends. I don’t see her or talk to her very often, but I certainly respect her, and it’s about time I linked to her blog. I haven’t checked it in a while, but check out her recent post on her book store and Chapters. http://siskacandbasilb.blogspot.com/2005/07/oh-dont-i-just-have-so-much-to-say.html

I’ve also added Monte Cook to my International Blogs links.

news…:

An achondroplastic dwarf in Florida named Molly Beavers sued Wal-Mart for firing her from her job at Sam’s Club because she did not smile enough; Beavers cannot smile because her face is partially paralyzed.[St. Petersburg Times]

A British man pleaded guilty to unloading a fire extinguisher into his friend’s anus. “It was just horseplay that went wrong,” said the man’s lawyer.[The Daily Record] Another British man was sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison for making his friend Ernest dress in a skirt, forcing him to strip, shaving him all over, and painting him green so he would look like Shrek.

A county commissioner in Marion County, Florida, was promoting his plan to send sex offenders to Mexico,[Local6.com] and four cheerleaders in Texas were in trouble for smearing human feces on a pizza in an attempt to frame a rival cheerleading squad.[WOAI.com]

A nun in Romania, undergoing exorcism, died after she was tied to a cross, gagged, and left alone for three days in a cold room. “I don’t understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this,” said the priest who organized the exorcism.[BBC News]

Philip Cooney, the chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who achieved notoriety when he revised government reports on global warming to cover up the link between greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures, quit his job to become a lobbyist for ExxonMobil. “Perhaps he won’t even notice he has changed jobs,” said the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.[Washington Post]

A four-year-old boy died after passing out on the Mission: Space centrifuge ride at Disney World,[Chicago Sun-Times] and in Britain a ten-year-old boy began to bang his head into a car dashboard. “It’s eating me, it’s eating me,” he yelled as blood trickled down his face. Doctors later removed a hornet (or possibly a horsefly) from his inner ear.[ICBerkshire.co.uk]

It was reported that as many as one thousand teenage boys have been thrown out of a fundamentalist Mormon community so that their fathers could marry more wives.[The Guardian]

It was revealed that the Defense Department, in violation of the federal Privacy Act, has been building a database of thirty million sixteen- to twenty-five-year-olds.

in Ethiopia a twelve-year-old girl was abducted and was about to be forced into marriage but was rescued by lions, which ran her captors off and guarded her until police and relatives came to her rescue.[AP] The president and CEO of Formula One racing, discussing racer Danica Patrick, said that “women should be dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances.”[ESPN]