Funnyman Johnson

If you don't follow the NFL, know who WR Chad Johnson is, know about his "can he cover me list" or know a little about insurance television commercials in the US... then this post is going to make no sence at all to you.

But for the others, I just found this quote from Chad Johnson on his upcoming game against the Packers for DB Al Harris:

"Johnson said, “Two things are going to happen. The bad thing is, you have to cover me. The good thing is, you can switch your insurance to Geico and save
10%."

Absolutly hilarious.

VFB Pokal

In a continuously brutal season, there will be no "Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin" cheering for VFB Stuttgart fans :-(

Here's what I'd like to know, if the new coach Trapatoni was supposed to be a defense-first coach, then why exactly does VFB have one of the worst goals against in the league despite having the best goaltender who is also having a stellar year??

Trap-O-crap-O is not the answer for VFB:

Yoda Street Dance

It's Friday and tme to dance, don't ya know that Yoda can get down with all the home-ies!

That Feeling

Sometimes something happens that leaves a terrible feeling in the bottom of your stomack and there's nothing you can do about it. Those situations are never going to go away completly, but here's hoping we can all have a little less...

No Fear Beauty

Gadling's pic of the day for 06/06/05 is breathtakingly good:

Cause

Unitus is a great idea and a terrific cause. Get on board.

Wednesday Wackyness

How's your Wednesday going? Sometimes you've just got to let loose :-)

I'm off to the movies...

Another Poker Night Cometh

We're going to have another poker night soon, only trouble is that I have no idea which city I'll be in to host it over the next two weeks. In the meantime I'll be practicing my chip tricks :-) (scroll down linkpage for videos)

Site Redux

Re-did the site tonight, took some gigging, deleted some WAY old links that I don't even use myself anymore, reduced the main page posts to the last 3 days (older posts can still be accessed through the archive list or the previous post list on the right), updated my book list, some other stuff including the addition of this pic to my header:



Let me know how you like it (I re-activated comments as well) :-)

Happy Stuff

Random thoughts and destinations...

Here's a great mini-movie on how the United States came to be. Funniest part of the video is when they happen to mention that Canada burned down Washington DC.

If that's not your fancy why not try this "Sex ID" test to see how masculine/feminine you are. For the record I came right on average for men although I did score perfect on parts 1 and 6 :-)

If that bores you then go check out this animated gif depicting the entire Star Wars movie. Not enough? Here's the Empire's Strikes Back.

I love the Fall...

Optical Illusion

A really cool optical illusion. This is no illusion though, it's the B2Day pic of the day:

Happy Face Signs

I love when you find signs and inanimate objects that look like happy faces! I almost got run over by a trolley standing in the middle of the road trying to take this pic, scared the living bejezzers out of me!



Well the mouth is flat but I was in a good mood that day so trust me, it's smiling ;-)

Update: Vowe's also got some great Autumn pics of Darmstadt.

Darmstadt Again!?!

After getting my morning buzz on at CBP it's no wonder these pics from last Sat night in Darmstadt turned out the way they did!



Finally got a chance to get some Bundesliga soccer in after having been on the road and mostly out of Germany for the past 2 months:



What exactly is up with my camera?? The pics before and after this night are totally clear... weird:

Stuttgart Breakfast Club

I can't believe how fast the weeks are flying by. What seemed like yesturday was what I was doing at this exact time last Saturday morning in Stuttgart. After a long night have beer after beer with Jenny and Tim-eh I just had to make a quick pitstop at CBP (circle beer place) before heading on to Darmstadt (yes back to Darmstadt again!). To my utter surprise CBP was not even open yet! Can't an alckie get his fix at 10:30am on a Sat morning! Things did not look good with all the tables and chairs folded up as I approached:



Long story short, met the guy who was opening the place (a very cool guy by the way) and we made a mutually acceptable deal, I help him pull down a few chairs and hook up the taps...



...and voila, free beers for the Rossman :-)



Having only an hour before the train left gave just a perfect amount of time to enjoy the brisk Fall air, conversation with a 13 year CBP vet and a cold frosty (ok two actually). That morning was great, first CBP beer of the day! Very cool!

Play Day

It's Saturday and time for some fun. Here in Paris this week they've got the Star Wars exhibition going on all week, and before you even suggest it no I haven't hit it... yet ;-) But enough of work talk, it's the weekend and even Darth's gotta take a break once in a while! :-)

The Weekend Has Arrived!

Question: What comes before Part B?

Answer: Part-Ay!



Those two Hefe's filling up over there are for us buddy!

Deutsch Skelator

The new German Cancellor has been named... do you see any resemblance?



:-)

BBQ Texas Style

Drool...

Oh Baby!

The schedule for the most exciting tournament in the world is out. Let the games begin!



Go Canada Go!!

Halloween A Commeth

Best Halloween costumes ever! The retired Hooters girls!



Jules got this one in :-) Hilarious! :-)

Darmstadt - The Return Continues

The journey continues, onward to Darmstadt. Now I've been to Darmstadt many times, and of course will be there many times more, so I posted some picks of the plantation gardens I was touring through on this fine day:



Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people!



Hi-5 from the traveling Polar Bear! It's always great to catch up with some Canadians while on travels! :-)

St. Michelle

Way behind in my posts, and now that Blogger seems to be back up to speed there's just no excuse! Continueing last week's saga, after hitting St. Malo we went to check out the famous St. Michelle castle. The view on the way was great, that's the sea in the background:



The sun was so bright that this didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped, out in the middle of nowhere, the lone windmill:


The castle, surrounded by water during high tide, a mountain surrounded by plains during low tide:



Still some km's away the St. Michelle chapel stands out:



Getting closer, unfortunatly there's only one parking lot outside the castle wich you must park in to avoid being swept away with the tides when the water rises (every 6 hours here):



The narrow alley's inside the castle grounds, lined with shops, restaurants and pubs:



Of course there were still some secrluded areas around the castle ground where one could let one self drift into deep thought:



... or to pick one's royal nose ;-)



Either I've gotten fat or these are some skinny pathways!



The chapel/castle from the interior, imagine trying to storm this bad boy!



The lookout, low tide:



St. Michelle rocks but thankfully it was low-tourist season (the summer vacation period is over here in Europe) otherwise the small streets and limited parking and space would make things quite... er pissy.

Friday Funny

Looks like the blogger image upload might be fixed... for now. Here's one that should have been posted last Friday:

And with the final task of the day I leave you with something to put a smile on your face for the weekend via biztactics:

Dreams of Heaven

Heaven - Brian Adams

Oh thinking about all our younger years
There was only you and me
We were young and wild and free

Now nothin' can take you away from me
We've been down that road before
But that's over now
You keep me comin' back for more

Baby you're all that I want
When you're lyin' here in my arms
I'm findin' it hard to believe
We're in heaven
And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn't too hard to see
We're in heaven

Oh once in your life you find someone
Who will turn your world around
Bring you up when you're feelin' down

Ya nothin' could change what you mean to me
Oh there's lots that I could say
But just hold me now
Cause our love will light the way

And baby you're all that I want
When you're lyin' here in my arms
I'm findin' it hard to believe
We're in heaven
And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn't too hard to see
We're in heaven

I've been waiting for so long
For something to arrive
For love to come along

Now our dreams are coming true
Through the good times and the bad
Ya I'll be standin' there by you

Update

Having problems with the site margins, post image uploading and code mods. Basically the site is pissing me off tonight and I'll look at it tomorrow. At least Fall has arrived :-)

Hockey Pool Notes

My last Yahoo hockey pool commissioner message post:

1 - Ross is the sexyness.

2 - ...but not very articulate.

3 - rosssuckass wines that I will win when he sits in first place and picks up ovechbitch of waivers, ridiculous.

4 - Stevie J is gay.

5 - Griz is his gay lover.

6 - Adam videos it because he's too ugly to participate.

7 - Did I mention that I'm the sexyness? Oh right, I did.

8 - I'm thinking about changing the # of transactions because Adam sends me crying spam about his crappy team. Here's a hint Adam, don't draft players not playing in the league or others that own those blue retard parking space passes.

9 - European girls are easy, I'm ugly, stupid and have a small penis yet I still get laid so much I look forward to nights were I'm alone.

10 - Number 9 is totally untrue... psych!

Damn

I've been experiencing flake-y Blogger file upload service for the past week and a half since they did their great "upgrade", and it's making posting a real pain in the a$$!

Get it together Blogger, you're a great service, stay within that area of my mindshare.

Posts soon... geez.

St. Malo, The Return

Just joking, I've never actually been there before, but I was going with title consistency ;-) St. Malo is a haven within France... a secret Oasis... St. Malo is a small town on the Atlantic coast of France, about 1.5 hours west of the beaches of Caen. I'm going to let the pics tell my story, this one's from downtown St. Malo:



Of course because St. Malo is so close to the UK (just across the channel), many of the islands are owned or co-owned by Britain and there's lots of medieval castles. Can you believe this fortress about a half mile off the coast!



That pic was taken from the batiments of a walled castle... well castle slash village on the mainland. The inner-village which is protected by the castle's outer walls is flush with touristy stores, restaurants and other gems:



Although France is not currently at war, a select few dedicated warriors still man the batiments:



Just off the beach you see this stairwell sticking out of the sea. The beach is so flat and the tide so variable that every 6 hours the sea rises and falls so much as to make a land path to that castle in the first pic. In addition they build a square wall with a diving board (the weird steps) so when the tide recedes there's a public pool right there, fishies and all! Unfortunately I meant to go back and take a pic when the tide was down, but I forgot my camera the first day and the second I was in my surfing gear (more to come, see below!):



St. Malo is famous for the guy that "discovered" Quebec because he actually left from here. There's a bunch of monuments here for that guy... I just wonder if we should celebrate his "discovery" or not, it is Quebec after all, wart of Canada ;-) Just joking eh! (well kinda)



Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee:



The international (and especially the Canadian) flags are cool, but the story is even better. Just behind this now converted restaurant is where the castle dogs used to be kept. In order to enforce the curfew the guards used to let out all the ravaging dogs kept here at night to run around the skinny streets in search of any delinquents. Tres cool!



Another view of the dog pen. Who let the dogs out!



Ok, here's the story, I've never tried surfing/wind surfing/boogie boarding etc. before and it was finally time to de-virginize myself. Being near the coast with someone who has all the equipement and required clothes totally got me psyched up for it... that was until I put their wet suit on. Thank god this pic turned out fuzzy because let me tell you that you don't want to see the clear version. The suit was soooo tight on "my boys" that not only was blood circulation cut off to sensitive areas, but there was also a clearly visible division of "assets" seen through the skin tight suit. I say again, thank god for the flash and blurry photo! What a superstar ;-)



I won't bore you with stories or pics from the nightlife out at restaurants and bars with over 300 international beers on the menu (I forgot my camera ;-) , so picking up the next day we decided to go hiking along the coast... brilliant:



I love it:



The waves were returning after a 8-9 day hiatus so the surfers were out and about. We must have spent over 2 hours just watching them catch waves:



That's the city and castle in the background:



St. Malo rocks, just go there... period. More on last week's tour (which is still going on) soon...

Back to Caen

After just catching my breath in Paris we were off to the coast for an extended weekend to catch up with all the gossip ;-) Of course the 4+ hour drive was cut in half nicely with a stopover in Caen, only the third time I've been there. Usually I don't spend must time in Caen itself save a trip to the Canadian War Memorial and Museum and head for the coast to check out the bunkers and battlegrounds of D-day however this time we headed straight for the core of the city to get our hunger on. There's so much to see even right downtown:


If we had more time we would have camped out on this lawn all day (the view overlooks the downtown core):



Of course Caen experiences its share of tourists, I found this restaurant aptly names "the tourists" pretty funny, and no I did not eat there (I hit a surprisingly disappointing Italian style restaurant, not recommended):



With the sun going down we headed on to St. Malo...

Paris - The Return

Well although Internet access is going to be thin until my return on Monday I'm going to try and squeeze a few posts in here and there. As you know by now I'M BACK! Back in Europe that is, so EuroRoss is no longer a lie and actually located... in Europe ;-)

Although I wasn't in Paris long (a horror flight over, late, cancelled and missed connections, terrible customer service, Air Canada sux and under no circumstances fly with British Midlands, THEY ARE THE MOST BRUTALLY BITCHY SHITHEADS ON THE PLANET!) before leaving again, I did notice something unusual. Paris as you may know has a ton of different monuments from the ages, it's part of the attraction of the city for tourists and romanticists alike. One thing that struck me this time though is how you can be walking down an otherwise inoculus street when all of a sudden out of nowhere there's a monument smack dab in the middle of the road with high speed cars wizzing all around it like it's not even there. Pretty, cool and weird all at the same time. This is not the famous arc for those wondering, just another run-of-the-mill monument ;-)



Each time I go to Paris I discover something new that captures the imagination:



The weekend fast approaches! After tomorrow's meetings in Pforzheim I'll be headed to Stuttgart to connect with anyone and everyone who's around or like me cuming in for the weekend. Of course it'll all start off at Circle Beer Place, say around 8. Hope to see yall out and about!

Tunnel Travels

TONS of stuff to post but it's all going to have to wait just a little longer as the last two weeks has been crazy! In 14 days: Canada, Ottawa-Toronto-Kingston-Montreal-Tucon, Arizona USA-London-Paris-St. Melo-St. Michelle-Paris and leaving tomorrow for Darmstadt, then Karlsruhe-Pforzheim-Stuttgart-Darmstadt-Paris... CRAZY!

Sorry been slow on the e-mails and posts, it'll be back up and running soon enough, and still no mobile/cell/handy here in Europe yet as my old number is disconnected, so you'll have to hit me with an e-mail (which might have to be resent as well as many have told me that there's haven't been getting through lately). Can't wait to see all the Germany and then Paris Crew #3!! Until then... enjoy:

Fucking Sign

The most stolen sign in Germany:

Stock Bonanza Exposed

This is great, this guy did a test by imagining he had invested in all the stocks promoted by spam e-mails that he recieved to see the results (which are pretty obvious). I can't wait for the next guy to start testing the promises from Viagra spam ;-)



(via Boing Boing)

TGOR Nation, the Team 1200 sports morning radio crew is best frigging radio entertainment bar none. Jungle Jim is absolutely hilarious, today's funny was lifted from him:

Two guys are sitting at the hockey game and one turns to the other and says: "It's so good you could actually make it to the game tonight, the wife let you come even though it was her birthday!"

Guy 2: "Yeah, I'm pretty lucky."

Guy 1: "Well you must have given her an extra special birthday gift eh."

Guy 2: "No I didn't get her anything."

Guy 1: "What? Why not?"

Guy 2: "Well she didn't use the gift I gave her last year so I decided not to get anything this year."

Guy 1: "What did you get her last year?"

Guy 2: "A grave plot."

Also, for all you Sens and Leaf fans out there, they've been playing this song all week in Ottawa!

Touching Me Touching You

Sweet Caroline - Neil Diamond

Where it began
I can’t begin to knowin’
But then I know it’s growin’ strong

Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who’d have believed you’d come along

Hands,
touchin’ hands
Reachin’ out
Touchin’ me
Touchin’ you

Sweet caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined
To believe they never would

But now I
Look at the night
And it don’t seem so lonely
We fill it up with only two
And when I hurt
Hurtin’ runs off my shoulders
How can I hurt when I’m with you

Warm,
touchin’ warm
Reachin’ out
Touchin’ me
Touchin’ me

Sweet caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined
To believe they never would
Oh, no, no

Sweet caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined
I believed they never could

Sweet caroline

Map Hack

It's only available for US zip codes as of yet, but take a look at this cool map hack:



Can you guess the zip code I tried... you got it: 90210 ;-)

Update: Grandma tried it out but got a totally different map... I like hers better ;-)

An Idea

I've got an idea:

Idiot Test

Boys will be boys. If you're a girl and can't figure out what he's sliding in, consider yourself lucky.

Quote Of The Day

"If you're going to panic, panic early."

- Maureen Miskovic, Eurasia Group

Reminded me of the old WinAmp logo:

A world without ads? I'd settle for somewhere without ads! They've even got em on escalator handrails now!

Cn Yuo Raed Tihs?

Tokaruk got this one in:

Can you raed tihs?

Olny srmat poelpe can.I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd
waht I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

if you can raed tihs psas it on.