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What Not to Say . We all find ourselves in situations where comment is required. Sometimes the perfect response comes immediately to mind. Sometimes times the perfect response comes seven hours later, when it's far too late to be of any use. Sometimes an adequate answer comes quickly enough, but all too often not even that will do and you're left mumbling something lame and incoherent. And then there are those times when exactly the wrong response is the first thing on your lips. And even if it's accurate, or hilarious, or both, it's probably not worth the blowback. Or the backpedalling. More. . .
 Regrettable Rides: Which Way to the Carwash? Vehicles get dirty. Inside and out, it takes some effort to maintain a clean automobile. However, it also takes effort to do this. While standing outside of Starbucks, I turned around and saw a jeep covered in so much dirt that I defy anyone to tell methe actual colour of the jeep underneath. I just hope that they opened the rear hatch after they took that shortcut through the swamp, or across the barnyard, or took that wrong way into the construction zone. More. . .
 To Kvetch or to Kvell, That is the Kvestion. . . It is pretty much agreed by all that having children is a great experience leavened by the terrible twos, adolescent hormone surges and teen age angst; a mixture of both joy and sadness, laughter and tears, redemption and frustration. In other words the balance in a parent’s life goes from kvelling (rejoicing) to kvetching (complaining). If you grew up in a Jewish home you probably know very well the true meaning of both those words. But to the uninitiated they often lose some of their power. More . . .
 Unhappy Meal. Sometimes I eat fast food. Not every day, or even every week, thankfully. Most days I really do want to eat a healthy and balanced diet. But there are other times when I eat such bad food that it more than makes up for it. Seriously, it's not always convenient or timely to cook and there are times when the craving for a greasy hamburger is hard to resist. This story is about one of those times. Not long ago, when my family had received some coupons from a certain clown-themed fast food place, we found ourselves with faced with a choice. More . . .
 Absurdity in Signage: It's All About the Breakfast. Are you familiar with the term feature creep? Usually applied to technology, typically software, which offers far more features than are really required. This often leads to problems, since adding features can be expensive and of course leads to more potential things to go wrong. Well, here we have an example of feature creep at a hotel. The problem? Insufficient sign space. More. . .
 Chipotle Madness. Are you familiar with the term ubiquitous? From the Latin ubique, meaning everywhere, it means essentially the same thing in English. The word is commonly used to describe things or phenomena frequently encountered, although not necessarily omnipresent, such as Starbucks locations in urban centers. Well, I'm not sure when or how this happened, but apparently Chipotle is now fully ubiquitous. More. . .
Regrettable Rides: Frankentruck Rides Again. Once again, it seems that the Atlantic Superstore parking lot is where franken vehicles and their owners like to hang out. Well, I'm assuming about an owner in this case. For all I know, this Toyota truck drove itself here. The thing has a side window made of red plastic stretch wrap, and it does proclaim itself to be "Tuff" and who am I to argue with a truck that can't spell? More. . .
 Why You Should Believe In God (Even If You'd Really Rather Not). Sometimes the things we think are the most complicated are actually very simple. For example, making lasagna is assumed to be challenging, but really it's just a matter of preparing your sauce, meat, etc, and putting it in layers. Mississippi might be scary for kids learning to spell, but it's really just some double letters segregated by the letter i. And you either believe in God, or you don't. As much as people would prefer to hedge on this, there really isn't any middle ground. More. . .
 What Dreams May Come, Volume V: The Plastic Arachnid. Dreams are a perfectly normal phenomenon. For that matter, so are spiders, if you can call them a phenomenon. Lots of folks would call them an annoyance or worse. I don'tmind spiders so much, and would prefer not to kill them, so long as they aren't actually crawling on me. The way I look at it, anything that might be eating ants or earwigs is more welcome in my home than either of those insects. But this isn't really about how I feel about spiders. This is about a dream I had recently. As you may have guessed, this dream was indeed about a spider. More . . .
Absurdity in Signage: Patient Cleanliness. This is a first for Absurdity in Signage. Normally we feature either changeable letter signs or poorly concepted road signs, so a hand written note on a hospital room door is a bit of a departure. This happened to be up on a door the last time I was in the hospital, and it struck me funny. The notion of putting a note on a door to indicate the cleanliness level of the patient inside is just funny. More. . .
 A Thousand Words, Volume XXIV — Worst Ever Edition. It's that time again. It's been a few months since the last edition of A Thousand Words, but everyone loves funny photos, especially when accompanied by equally, if not even funnier, captions. Once again, we have a theme, this time it's more with the captions. If you haven't seen A Thousand Words before, you may want to check out the arrows at the bottom of this page, which you can use to get to every previous edition. This is number 24, so that's a lot of funny photos. More. . .
 Confessions of a SpongeMom. The SpongeBob invasion of my psyche began innocently enough. I'd be washing the dishes with a . . . yellow sponge . . . and hear that maniacal laugh over and over coming from the other room where my son sat mesmerized in front of the tube. Before I knew it, I began sponging behind everyone's back. After my son fell asleep, I'd sneak in more SpongeBob "on demand," watching the funny yellow guy into the wee hours of the night. I even downloaded his laugh for my ringtone. More. . .
 An Open Letter to the Other Marko Peric. Let's get something out of the way right now. Odds are that you aren't the Marko Peric this letter is addressed to. After all, there are six billion people on this planet, most of whom have some other name. Even if you have the good fortune to be named Marko Peric (in which case, congratulations, it's a great name), there's a good chance this isn't actually intended for you. But feel free to read on anyway, it is an open letter after all. More . . .
Regrettable Rides: Attention to Detail. Some rides are regrettable from a general lack of inattention and care — they fall into a state of despair and over time, they become mobile disaster areas. Others become that way to due some sudden calamity, such as an accident that requires replacing half the body panels with others of mismatched colour. And then there are the vehicles that are terrible because someone wants them to be that way. Not terrible, per se, not often does a project start out with the intended result being a catastrophe. More. . .
Absurdity in Signage: Got Vowels? Ah, the changeable text sign. So ubiquitous, so bland, so vulnerable to vandalism, and so utterly prone to total message failure. This sign was probably not vandalized, as it sits high enough that even a standard step ladder would be well to short to reach it. So unless the vandals has an extension ladder or scissor lift, they didn't do this. And it's hard to imagine that any sign guy in the world would do this on purpose. More. .
 Can't Touch This. Recently I purchased a new computer monitor. For the record, there was nothing wrong with my old Samsung, apart from the fact that it dates from nine years ago, and is a little small by today's standards. But it has gone to a better place. No, not silicon heaven, it's actually still in service, permanently connected to a laptop with a non-functional screen. Migrating it to a new job was the perfect excuse to get myself a new monitor. I shopped around for a week or so, and found a very good deal on a widescreen LG. More. . .
 How to Deal With Boredom. The other evening I found myself rather bored. This is a rare occurrence for me, and I wasn't entirely sure what I should do with the rest of my evening. So, I turned to that perpetual online time vacuum, Facebook. I changed my status to "Marko isn't sure what to do with the rest of the evening." Well, apparently that was an invitation, because occasional writer for this site, Mike Thomas, decided he should help me find something to do. More. . .
Regrettable Rides: A Frankencar in its Natural Habitat. We've featured a frankencar here before, as well as several frankentrucks. There was even frankenvan. When I inititally planned to put this picture up, my thought was to note that this Volkswagen Golf was clearly intended by someone to look like this, because although you can't possibly see it in the picture, there's a red door on the other side as well. It's too bad they didn't put a red hood on there to complete the pattern. More. . .
Absurdity in Signage: A Little Bit of Wendy's. So often signs are bland and merely informative, and they really don't offer any entertainment value. Of course, they aren't necessarily supposed to be entertaining, but they are so much more effective when they are. This sign might not have a particularly funny message, but it's the nicely obscure reference that makes it work. Apparently the sign guy at this Wendy's has a good memory for late '90s Latin dance pop music. More.
Regrettable Rides: Where Boats Go to Die.This feature is called Regrettable Rides. And while usually the vehicles here are regrettable in an amusing way, this one is just kinda sad. But what makes it most odd is that it's in the middle of the woods, miles from any harbour. I can understand retiring an old fishing boat that has outlived its usefulness. But abandoning it in the forest down a dirt road seems like a lot of misdirected effort. More. . .
 Correctly Heard Lyrics. Sometimes when you listen to music, the lyrics are not easy to make out. You are left wondering what precisely did you just hear. And then there are other times, when you can make out exactly what the words say, but you still are left wondering. Not because you didn't hear it, but because it sounds like utter nonsense. In case haven't figured it out yet, this is a Good/Bad/Ugly rating of songs with lyrics that don't make any sense. More . . .
 Pointless Protest. As I've said more than once in the past, there are things that I just don't understand, such as quantum mechanics, Finnegan's Wake, and the public's general fascination with bears. It looks like it's time to add a new item to this list, because for the life of me, I can't understand the level of protest going on about the Olympics. Full disclosure here — I enjoy the Olympics. I really do. I particularly enjoy the winter Olympics, and not just because as a Canadian, I was genetically engineered to love winter sports. More.
Absurdity in Signage: Most Important Meal of the Day. Sometimes you know what a sign is supposed to say, but due to tampering, vandalism, or good old sign guy negligence, it doesn't quite say that. This sign is missing an 'O' but it's a lot funnier without it. At least, I hope it's missing an 'O'. If not, well, I've clearly been eating my breakfast wrong for years. More . . .
A Thousand Words, Volume XXIII. It's that time again. It's been a few months since the last edition of A Thousand Words, but everyone loves funny photos, especially when accompanied by equally, if not even funnier, captions. This time around, we're trying something a little different — there is a theme to all the pictures. If you haven't seen A Thousand Words before, you may want to check out the arrows at the bottom of this page, which you can use to get to every previous edition. This is number 23, so that's a lot of funny photos. More. . .
 2010 Wilhelm Awards, Part II. It's hard to believe that a year has passed since the last Dontmindme.com Wilhelm Awards. A lot has happened in the last 12 months, and there are a lot of things and people which are, if not very, at least moderately deserving of a Wilhelm Award. Some of the winners were formally nominated during the last year, while others are now for the first time being mentioned in association with this prestigious prize. More. . .
Regrettable Rides: Look Ma, No Wheels! There are certain features that an automobile absolutely requires: a motor of some sort, a fuel supply, a steering mechanism, a stopping mechanism, a driver compartment. Pretty much everything else is optional, although it would make for a very unpleasant and unsafe ride if you had no windows, roof, exhaust system, lights, etc. There's one thing more that any auto needs — wheels. More. . .
2010 Wilhelm Awards, Part I. It's hard to believe that a year has passed since the last Dontmindme.com Wilhelm Awards. A lot has happened in the last 12 months, and there are a lot of things and people which are, if not very, at least moderately deserving of a Wilhelm Award. Some of the winners were formally nominated during the last year, while others are now for the first time being mentioned in association with this prestigious prize. There are enough worthy winners this time around that the awards are being split over two weeks, so look for more Wilhelm Winners in seven days. More. . .
 What Dreams May Come, Volume IV. To sleep, perchance to dream. We all dream, probably every single night. How often do we actually remember our dreams, though? Frequently when you awaken the dream vanishes like a puff of smoke. Sometimes a dream will stick in the memory for a few minutes or hours, but doesn't last the day. And then there are other times, when for whatever reason, a dream is as vivid and as memorable as if you actually lived it. Personally, I find I might remember moreso if the dream is particularly outlandish. The other night I had such a dream. More. . .
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