Random observations from the Gold Cup and Saucer Parade:

• Bubble machines are big, and an easy and cheap way to give your float lots of visual energy.
• What’s with the older gentleman, a “float of one” walking along in a sombrero?
• Islanders seem to have abandoned the collapsable lawn chairs in a bag that were so obvious at the Festival of Lights and turned back to traditional lawn chairs. No word on whether Steven Garrity has followed the herd or not.
• Majorettes are showing more skin these days, and the anti-anorexia movement is, thankfully, demonstrating headway, as evidenced by the variety of body types present. Unfortunately this also appears to mean that Majorettes no longer actually twirl or throw batons, they just walk along carrying them.
• Is Hagar the Horrible popular enough to warrant a giant floating balloon statue? I heard a lot of parents trying to convince their kids it was really Elmo in a Viking costume; kids weren’t buying it.
• Only in Charlottetown could the winner of the award for “Most Humourous Float” be a float consisting of a flatbed truck of people in hippie costumes smoking giant pretend joints. I thought “obvious drug references” were banned in North America since Nancy Reagan? Thank God we’re still free here on the Island.
• Every father hopes their son will grow up to be hip and cool and eschew parades in favour of John Coltrane records and mint juleps. I am failing in this regard: Oliver loves marching bands and horses and Bush Dumville’s antique car. He even like Hagar the Elmo.

Our identical German twins have a weblog, or rather a Stories aus dem Tourbus

A hot night in Charlottetown. Too hot.

Escape to Tim’s for a cooling ice capp. This is the first day we’re really, really glad we have a car with air conditioning. Briefly consider running the car all night and sleeping on the back seat. Just like they do in Alaska to keep the engine blocks from freezing in the winter. Ohhh, Alaska, cool…

Stop at A&W for a Mozza Burger on the way home. Traffic, traffic, traffic. Everyone is out on the streets for their last taste of traffic freedom before the parade in the morning block everything in.

Home to pay bills left over from February (still can’t pay my Island Tel Internet bill online, #$@#$%!). Mozza burger has some sort of foreign congealed mass of boiled bacon fat — or something — in the middle and must be disposed of. #$@#$%!

Off to SDM to buy stamps and skin creme. The special skin creme they keep behind the counter we only know by its price: $2.22. I ask the pharmacist for “some 222 creme” and she looks at me weirdly and goes to the cupboard. They don’t have large bottles. But she can sell me two smaller bottles. The smaller bottles cost $1.11. This makes me very happy. My happiness is all lost on the pharmacist.

I forget to buy juice for Oliver for the morning, so take the long was ‘round to Ken’s Corner. Notice that Ken’s Corner, which used to be called Green Gables is now called Needs. Realize that all Green Gables stores are now renamed Needs. Ponder the demographic reasoning behind the corporate renaming decision. Reach no conclusions.

Ken’s Corner is hoppin’. There’s a dance across the street at the Curling Club. The band, Phase II, is playing a cover of I’m a Believer. The architecture in the Ken’s Corner neighbourhood serves to whirl the sound around into a frenzy.

Inside Ken’s Corner there are lots of people buying cigarettes and gum. There’s a lot of talk of Tyne Valley and people getting their heads smashed in. The woman in front of me has a large flaming tattoo on her shoulder. It sounds as though she, herself, is not from Tyne Valley.

I pay for my juice and marvel at the shapely singularity of the cashier’s nose; it is a work of art.

Back into the car. Turn on Magic 93 and the air conditioner. The Smashmouth cover of I’m a Believer is playing on the radio.

Home to frantically work while the traffic’s still good.

You can’t chop down a symmetry.

Readers have snapped up all of our late-summer housecleaning items quickly. I’ve received word of another LaserJet (this one a IIIsi, and this one in “fine working condition”) that’s fee to a good home. If you’re interested, drop me a line to forsale@reinvented.net and I’ll connect you to the seller.

We’re have a midsummer cleaning of the World HQ and have the following items to clear out:

• GONE HP LaserJet III laser printer. Parallel interface. About 12 years old. Paper feed needs repairing (may be helped by a solution here or not). A good solid battle tank of a printer that needs some attention. FREE.
• SOLD Xerox XJ8C colour inkjet printer. Good working order. About 4 years old. Drivers available for Windows versions up to and including XP and 2000. $15.
• SOLD CalComp DrawingSlate II graphics tablet. 5” by 4” drawing surface. Plugs into a PC’s DB9 serial port. Drivers available for Windows versions up to and including XP and 2000. Includes Fractal Dabbler software. UPDATE: missing a power supply. $20. $15.

When you call CBC Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown and ask the operator to connect you to someone, you’re briefly put on hold. While you are on hold the “hold music” is CBC Radio One which, more often than not, is audio of people talking.

This morning I called CBC to talk to Mitch Cormier and while I was on hold for a brief few seconds, I heard only the phrase “meteors raining down.” Then Mitch answered the phone.

If you assembled an audio montage of these micro soundbites you would have an interesting, and perhaps terrifying product.

By the way, Mitch actually used the phrase “XML staging area” in our conversation. That was frightening.

I talked yesterday about NetNewsWire and RSS versions of websites.

To this end, I’m now making two RSS feeds of this site available:

• http://ruk.ca/rss/index.php3
• http://ruk.ca/rss/discussion.php3

The first is simply the current news items as they appear on this page (“this page” assumes you’re reading this in a browser, of course). The second is a reverse chronological list of the discussion from readers about items that have appeared here; this is a much easier way (I’ve found, in the 5 minutes I’ve been using it) of following these items.

Cheers.

Speaking of Island Tel, er, Aliant, they announced their SMS messaging network today with great fanfare. Here’s a clip from their news release:

The service is being marketed to two distinct groups – to businesspeople who will likely use text messaging to ‘ease the pressure’ of demands of work and family – and to youth who are expected to use the service mainly for making social plans and staying in touch with friends.

“Alas William, I am not, as I have alternate social plans with my chums. It is nice to be able to ease the pressure with this technologic marvel, agree you not?”

But perhaps I judge too harshly, for the release continues:

Reports out of the UK also point to an SMS language of abbreviations catching on such as PC (please call) and BCNU (be seeing you) and a resurgence in use of the old telegram favorites such as TTFN (ta ta for now).

But I shouldn’t make such fun of my sporting partners so.

Regular readers of this website will realize the irony of the first two Platinum sponsors for the 2002 Senior Women’s Canadian Fastpitch Championship…

The tournament starts on Sunday, August 18; there should be some excellent ball, with the top women from across the country on the field.

I am usually not a fan of the OhHenry bar — if only because of their inane advertising.

But the new “limited edition” OhHenry bar with honey roasted peanuts is dreamy. Something about salt and sugar and peanuts and chocolate is really, really good.

An earlier version of this “limited edition” OhHenry won an award from the Packaging Association of Canada. The designer’s statement was as follows:

The inspiration for this award winning package design came during the client briefing when the bar was described as having an “explosion of honey roasted peanuts.” Working with Hershey’s technical team, we recommended a foil substrait for strongest shelf impact.

Comparing that original design to the one above, I wonder if the client blurted out something like “it’s like a wave of saucy sticky stingy honey bee goodness.”