Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Politics and trivia

Last night on my way home from work I noticed that election posters are going up in our Montreal borough. Again. Damn. Some posters from the federal by-election are still up here and there, and last week's school board election - do they really think these posters will entice me to vote for them? That I vote for a fake smile on a poster?

Nevertheless, our borough is now gearing up for a municipal by-election. Our borough mayor was obliged to resign amid much huffing and puffing and rightous indignation by, well, basically everyone who wasn't him.

You see, while he was mayor he misspent our money. Big surprise eh? It's never been done before, right? But him? He spent it on booze. Oh my! I'm thinking there's a bit of envy involved since most people didn't have access to the Glenffidich single malt.

According to media reports, the receipts reveal Outremont spent between $6,500 and $7,500 from January to June 2007, including more than $1,000 on 12-year old Glenfiddich Highland scotch single malt.
That would make the borough's alcohol budget the highest among all city boroughs, even though Outremont is the smallest and least populous on the island, according to Montreal newspaper La Presse.

The alcohol was allegedly consumed by Outremont's borough council and invited guests in a private lounge on the second floor of the council's headquarters.

Borough director Pierre Beaudet told the CBC's French language service that comparing Outremont's spending on booze with other municipalities is misleading because the others include the cost of alcohol in their catering budgets.

And so, Harbour had to resign and now pays for his Glenfiddich himself. Personally, though I dislike the taste of scotch, the smell is nice and I'd go for Lagavuline or Cragganmore.

And so, we have another election coming up. Hopefully the new mayor will be more discrete about his or her spending, or at any rate make sure it gets buried in the budget. Cause I can't take many more of these elections.

====================================================

In other news, a ton of things you probably never wanted to know about your body:

  • Your body has more bacteria than cells.
  • In one day, a human sheds 10 billion skin flakes. This amounts to approximately two kilograms in a year.
  • Every square inch of the human body has about 19,000,000 skin cells.
  • Every hour one billion cells in the body must be replaced.
  • The human body makes anywhere from 1 to 3 pints of saliva every 24 hours.
  • The human body has approximately 37,000 miles of capillaries.
  • The adult human body requires about 88 pounds of oxygen daily.
  • The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body.
  • There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee. You don't see all of them because most are too fine and light to be noticed.
  • The ashes of the average cremated person weigh 9 pounds
  • The human body can survive longer without food than without sleep. While starvation takes a few weeks you would die after about 10 days without sleep.
  • The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet.
  • You blink about 84 million times in a year.
====================================================

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane" Philip K. Dick

9 comments:

ticknart said...

It's nice to know that there's a politician out there who was more into the quality of his drinks than the quantity.

geewits said...

So many comments so little space!

I too hate Scotch and my husband probably drinks the same amount of alcohol in a year that a 24-year-old guy drinks on his first day in Vegas, yet his vendors give us expensive Scotch all the time. I wish I could sell it on e-bay!

On your body factoids:
In one day, a human sheds 10 billion skin flakes. This amounts to approximately two kilograms in a year.:

I think I shed 30 billion a day. I have excessively dry skin and a very dusty house (everyone knows house dust is mostly shed skin, right?)

The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body.:

I use to do this at parties: Have someone lie down and mark their height and them have them move to put their arms between the books or shoes or whatever. And then I would make fun of them if they weren't proportionate! I think my husband has longer arms than he is tall - kinda ape-like!

The ashes of the average cremated person weigh 9 pounds:

Not when they are in a marble urn. Several years back when my brother was a practicing crackhead, I bribed his wife to locate my Dad's urn. I flew to North Carolina to bring it here to Texas. This was shortly after September 11th. And I'm carrying a sealed marble 8"x8"x7" box through the airport. That was a crazy trip and a VERY heavy urn. (I sat in the bar at the airport and sat the urn beside me and ordered two drinks and talked to it. It was funny.)

Hageltoast said...

also, bone ash is great is pot glazes. Is it twisted that i know that?
Love the PKD quote.

pissed off patricia said...

If that was the only problem we in the US had with our politicians, we would probably not pay any attention to it. At least no one died as a result of what he did.

XUP said...

I think we can really stop with the political posters, boards and flyers. It's such a waste of paper products. I'm joining the first party that comes up with a green alternative.

geewits - remind me to invite you my next pary... you're such a wild and crazy animal!!

Ian Lidster said...

The way around the outrageous booze expenditure (and Glenfiddich wouldn't have been my primo-single malt choice back in my scotch tippling days) is to elect a crackhead mayor like Washington DC did a few years ago.
As for your body factoids. I'd just rather not think about it.

Jazz said...

Ticknart - It seems that didn't weigh much in the balance.

Geewits - Those comments made me laugh out loud. Thanks, I neede that today.

Toast - Um, yeah, it is mildly twisted. But so long as you don't use your neighbor's ashes to glaze pots, it's ok

POP - It's far from the only problem with have with politicians, though all the problems would be easy to resolve. All they have to do is stop breathing...

UP - Actually I'd probably be more inclined to vote for them if I didn't see their faces.

Ian - Americans really know how to go all out, don't they?

Jocelyn said...

Wow, I never knew: my body got it goin' on!

linda said...

Great, just another baker's dozen reasons to feel more disgusted with my body than usual....sigh