One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside of us all.”

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins??”

The old Cherokee simply replied: “The one you feed.”

Thanks Paul.

The Doctor replied “Of course I won’t laugh, I’m a professional. In over twenty years I’ve never laughed at a patient.”

“Okay then,” Bob said, and proceeded to drop his trousers, revealing the tiniest ‘whoo-ha’ the doctor had ever seen. It couldn’t have been bigger than the size of a AAA battery.

Unable to control himself, the doctor started giggling, then fell laughing to the floor. Ten minutes later he was able to struggle to his feet and regain his composure.

“I’m so sorry,” said the doctor. “I really am. I don’t know what came over me. On my honor as a doctor and a gentleman, I promise it won’t happen again. Now, what seems to be the problem?”

“It’s swollen,” Bob replied.

Thanks Deb!

Uhm… that is just wrong.

So… this is old news, but I’ve had this one in the queue for a while. It’s regarding Nalgene bottles and the fact that it has been recently disclosed that and ingredient in some of the plastics used in the bottles, Bisphenol A, is particularly harmful to one’s health. Retailers everywhere were and are jumping on the bandwagon to remove all such products off the shelves.

Apparently, even small doses of this chemical can increase prostate, breast and ovarian cancer cell growth. There’s evidence linking it to infertility problems. It behaves as some sort of synthetic estrogen that can alter the way normal estrogen interacts with developing nerve cells important for brain development and normal functions of the mature brain. I think my risk for ovarian cancer remains pretty low, but the other stuff really scares me.

Curious, I wondered if the bottle I was using at my desk was a potential culprit that could be leading to my premature demise and made a stark discovery. This bottle was indeed one which could potentially contain this dreaded chemical. My first clue, when I went to a CBC.ca article describing the situation, was that my water bottle looked exactly like the bottles they show in the picture attached to the story! Another clue, as indicated in the article, is the presence of the number “7″ in the recycle symbol located on the bottle.

They indicated that if you were unsure if your bottle contained the questionable chemical, then you should contact the manufacturer. Upon close inspection of my bottle, the only clue indicating the manufacturer’s identity was a “Made In China” stamp. I called China and left a message. I expect they’ll get back to me soon. Listen up folks, if you haven’t already done so… If you are unsure if your bottle contains the questionable chemical: throw…the…bottle…away! I threw out my son’s favourite water bottle and he fished it out of the garbage can. Kids are immortal, or so they think. I retrieved his bottle again, told him that I scooped dog poop into it (I didn’t really), and then threw it out again. This time it stayed in the garbage.

I play pool in a local fun league. There’s roughly a hundred people in the league, divided into about 20 teams. Every Wednesday we get together and attempt to pocket balls for the sake of entertainment. By virtue of my ranking (average games won) among these folks I am the captain of one of these teams. This year was a fairly successful year for me and my team. My team finished second in the finals and I personally ranked 7th in the league.

At the end of each season, the league throws a kickass banquet, complete with awards, prizes, and a pool tournament. They cater in BBQ steak and have a buffet-style spread of baked potatoes and various salads. They usually draw names for prizes that vary in size from a $300.00 golfing weekend get-a-way to a $75 dollar Walmart coupon. Usually, there’s about half as many prizes as there are qualifying members. Pretty good odds of winning a prize. But this year, there was a prize for every single player in the league. Pretty awesome. On top of that, they gave away a shitload of Dooly’s cash and Pizza Delight coupons. In the draws, I picked up a pool cue (which I sold for a hundred bucks) and two pizza coupons.

We tried to use the coupons that night on the way home, but Pizza Delight closes a little earlier than 2:30 a.m. apparently. I put the coupons in my shirt pocket, we stopped at Greco for pizza, then we went home, went to bed and the next day continued about our normal business and household chores. Changing clothes from the washer to the dryer, I noticed a bunch of little pieces of paper. Oh no! My pizza coupons! Oh well… shit happens.

That was two weeks ago.

Friday, I was wearing that same shirt and noticed a ball of something in the shirt pocket. It was the pizza coupons, all balled up after being washed into raw pulp and then reconverted to a ball of paper after going through the dryer. I showed it to a colleague and half jokingly asked if Pizza Delight would accept it. She suggested that I wet the paper and attempt to unfold it again. I did just that and after some careful prying and spreading I was able to produce a couple of scraps of paper closely resembling their original form. They looked like something discovered in an archaeological dig. I let them dry and pressed them inside a notebook and went to Pizza Delight lunchtime today. After some giggling and poking fun at my expense, the nice young lady behind the counter wrote me up some new coupons and I was on my way!

The prize that keeps on giving. Free pizza… twice! Kind of.

Text messaging as a form of communication is getting as embedded into our lifestyles as the cellphones they are sent with.

It seems we have come full circle with communication technology. Once upon a time, all we had to communicate with folks far away, was the the postal system or a telegraph using morse code. Then, along came the telephone. Wow, press a few buttons and you can actually speak to someone far away. Cool! Then, came the cellular phone. You don’t have to be connected to a wire attached to the walls of your house… you can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world with this little gadget you can carry with you. Super cool!

But now, we are using those cell phones primarily to send cryptic text messages back and forth to people. At least that’s what the younger generation seems to use it for. My 16-year old son regularly accumulated enough text messages on his cell phone to drive the monthly bill up by 20, 30, and even 60 dollars. At 15 cents a message, that’s a lot of text messages that say nothing more than: “Wassup?”, “Nutn”, “me 2, wtf”, “ruok?”, “yup, wan2 gwan a d8 2moro”, “yes qt”, “gr8 cu l8r”

This amazing technology that allows us to speak with people anywhere is being used to text people anywhere anytime. Seems like a mismatch. It’s only a matter of time when a cellular provider offers a product that can be used only for texting.

My phone goes so far as to anticipate what the rest of your sentence might be. This morning, I tried to type “Enjoy your day” to a colleague who was taking a well-deserved day off. After I had “enjoy” typed, it inserted “toronto”. I ignored that and continued typing “your” and it inserted “mom”. Both suggestions were wrong and to be honest, made me feel a little creepy. Brrr…

While convenient at times, I despise the things. I guess I feel that way mostly because of how accessible they make you when you may not want to be. I’ve resisted carrying them since the nightmares started in the Blackberry days of my previous job.

What do y’all think? Could you live without your cell phone? Would you miss it if it fell into a toilet and got ruined? (Hmmm, that’s an idea!)

(This post was created using the web-browsing features on my Samsung M500 cell phone… NOT!)