As if I had to prove that clowns are evil

by T. Keith Edmunds

The Metro recently had an article about Dominic Deville, the man who has set up an Evil Clown company in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Parent hire this clown to torment their child through threatening text messages and the like to build up an unspeakable sense of impending attack. You know, the kind of thing good parents should do for their kids.

‘The child feels more and more that it is being pursued,’ said Deville.
‘The clown’s one and only aim is to smash a cake into the face of his victim, when they least expect it, during the course of seven days.’

According to Swisster, the service costs 666 francs. At the time of this posting, that equates to about $612 Canadian. A hell of a deal?

Furthermore, this article points out:

The banking industry has provided most clientele to date. “666 francs is a lot for a gift, but not for somebody real special. Bankers don’t care about the sum,” said Vonarburg [Deville's business partner], who points out that the service is aimed at 20-50-year-olds and is not really suitable for children.

Thanks for clearing that up. I’m sure my wife would appreciate this gift so much more than my children.

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Once in a lifetime job opportunity

by T. Keith Edmunds

You know how sometimes you wish that you could get paid to do nothing? Then you sigh and head into work, knowing that never in a million years would someone pay you to sit on your couch, eat Doritos and watch daytime TV.

Guess what? You’re wrong.

Proactol Ltd is advertising a position for a professional couch potato:

Proactol Ltd is currently looking to grow their established team by hiring a Product Testing Associate to trial their clinically tested natural fat binder in the real world.

Whether your day to day life consists of doing the school run’s, catching up on Facebook, visiting friends/family or just relaxing in front of the television; join the Proactol team and your life won’t have to change a single bit.

We are offering a competitive salary and benefits package for the right candidate to continue doing EXACTLY what they do every single day, and all we ask in return is that you eat 16% more calories a week - or approximately 400 more calories a day – whilst introducing the fat binder Proactol into your diet.

I can do that. So can you. But, like any other job advertisement, this position requires a certain skill set.

The ideal candidate should:

  • Not already be on a diet but eat a healthy balance of carbohydrates, fats and proteins
  • Be prepared to increase their existing calorie intake by 16% a week. This could be achieved by eating fatty foods such as Chinese takeaways, fish and chips, pizza or burgers.

So far, so good. As far as I understand it, Proactol wants to pay me to eat a bunch of fatty foods, take their supplement and not do a whole lot else. What do I get out of this other than potential weight gain and an increased risk of heart attack?

Remuneration

  • Your basic salary will be £23,750 a year
  • 365 day holiday – other than the weekly catch-up’s, every day will be a holiday in this job as you will get paid to be you!

Let’s see…at this moment, that translates into $36,583.36 Canadian. Not bad.

I wonder if they’ll consider people already employed. I mean, eating more doesn’t seem to be a bad way to supplement an income….

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Our sense of wonder

by T. Keith Edmunds

A portion of the Piri Reis world map, showing the coastlines of Brazil and west Africa.

A portion of the Piri Reis world map, showing the coastlines of Brazil and west Africa.

It’s a sad thing that many people, perhaps even the majority, lose their sense of wonder as they age. Children are naturally curious and everything their eyes fall on hold unfathomable mysteries they feel they have to explore.

Have you ever gone for a walk with a kid? Every stick, stone, insect and piece of trash on the sidewalk is worthy, in their mind, of investigation. This fascination with the world around us seems to fade as we age, as we become more familiar with the mundane objects that surround us, as we become more cynical, as we lose the idea of magic and with it our sense of wonder.

Fortunately, as the Bard says (more or less), there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. These are the things that help keep our sense of wonder alive. The killjoys of the world try to explain them away, but I like the idea there are things that continually defy explanation. Take the Voynich manuscript, for example — I can’t read enough about it. There is something about it that fuels my imagination and excites me in the sense that it is an object that cannot easily be explained.

There are other items, too, that pique my curiosity and make me wish I had the time and resources to try and solve the mysteries behind them. This website has a decent list of some of the anomalous items in the world — although it doesn’t include some strange artifacts that I would have included, it is a good start. It includes some of my favorites such as the Piri Reis map:

He depicts Europe and North Africa, the coast of Brazil, several islands (Azores, Canary Islands, and the mythical island of Antilia), and even Antarctica, which was thought to be discovered more than 300 years later. The most puzzling thing is not that it shows we need to rethink the chronology for a number of exploratory discoveries, but that it describes Antarctica’s topography as not being masked by ice and in great detail. The last time that occured was more than 6000 years ago. Tell me then. How did a Turkish admiral from half a millenium ago map a continent that’s been covered by ice for the last 6000 years?

There are many other strange findings that have been made over the year and around the globe, but I’ll save those for another day.

Hopefully, this list will help you recover some of your sense of wonder.

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