• If you cross the North Korean border illegally you get 12 years hard labor.
• If you cross the Iranian border illegally you are detained indefinitely.
• If you cross the Afghan border illegally, you are shot.
• If you cross the Saudi Arabian border illegally you will be jailed.
• If you cross the Chinese border illegally you may never be heard from again.
• If you cross the Venezuelan border illegally you will be branded a spy and your fate will be sealed.
• If you cross the Cuban border illegally you will be thrown into political prison to rot.
• If you cross the USA border illegally you get
  • a job,
  • a drivers license,
  • social insurance card,
  • welfare,
  • food vouchers,
  • subsidized rent or a loan to buy a house,
  • free education,
  • free health care,
  • a lobbyist in washington
  • millions of dollars worth of public documents printed in your language
  • the right to carry your country’s flag while you protest that you don’t get enough respect
  • and, in some instances, you can vote.

I just wanted to make sure I had a firm grasp on the situation

Crossing the Border! is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

It was suppertime and I had just joined my wife at the dinner table and the phone rings. I grabbed it and it’s one of the sales guys who works for me he was calling from our Ottawa office which was a about 150 miles from where I was. I’ll call him Harry Smith for lack of a better name. Harry told me that he had left his office and headed to the parking lot and his company car had been stolen. He had already called the police and was waiting for their arrival to take the report.

I told Harry to call a rental car company and rent a car so he could get home and to appointments the next day.  All was well and I returned to the dinner table.

The story continues at about 1:00AM when the phone rings again, with a foggy slurred voice I mustered an “Hello”. The voice at the other end sounded very official and I snapped myself awake.

The voice said, “I am Constable Jones [or something like that] with the Ottawa Regional Police.”, it continued, “Do you know a Harry Smith?”.

I replied “Sure, yes I do”

Constable Jones said “Please describe him to me.”, this I dutifully did.

He then asked “Please describe Mr. Smith’s car?”, and again I did, all the time wondering what the heck is going on.

He then put Harry on the phone and Harry explained it all to me. The morning of the supposed car theft, Harry had gone to the café across the street from his office on the way to work and parked his car in the café’s parking lot. He then proceeded to cross the street and head to his office, leaving his car at the cafe. At 5:00 PM or so when leaving the office, he had simply forgotten where he parked his car earlier that day, and as you now know, he reported his car stolen.

About 10:00 or so as he and his wife scampered off to bed, as he lay there trying to get to sleep, it dawned on him that he had left his car at the café. Feeling foolish, he asked his wife to drive him back to town which of course she did and she dropped him at his car and headed for home. Harry dropped into the café to get a soft drink, came out and then jumped in his car to head for home. Little did he know that the police had found his car and had an unmarked car nearby with two officers waiting to see who might come out of the coffee shop to the “stolen” car.

The rest of the story you know.

The Stolen Car is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

Trivial Pursuit Game

The origins of the TRIVIAL PURSUIT® game can be traced back to a blustery day in Montreal, December 15, 1979, when two friends, Scott Abbott, sports editor with the Canadian Press and Chris Haney, photo editor for the Montreal Gazette, engaged in a friendly argument over who was the better game player. This led to the friends creating a board game of their own. It was introduced in early 1982. After numerous setbacks and hard times, things finally began to go their way. Chieftain Products Ltd. became their Canadian distributor beginning October 1, 1982, and in 1983, Horn Abbot introduced the TRIVIAL PURSUIT® game to the Selchow & Righter game company for the United States market. The result? In 1984 alone, over 20 million games were sold. (Paraphrased from www.trivialpursuit.com)

For me it was 1984, Cheryl and I had bought our first Trivial Pursuit game, and we’d moved to Utah. The game was played day after day, weekend after weekend amongst our new friends in Utah.

In 1984, I hopped on a plane and flew to Australia for a business trip. While in Sydney, I was invited to stay at the home of Peter, Gabrielle and Anna Kirkwood. Peter was Varian’s sales manager Down Under, and I was a product manager for Varian’s Eimac division in Salt Lake City. Gabrielle was Peter’s gracious wife and Anna, their new daughter, was a few months old.

I really enjoyed the trip and their home. Where we might see sparrows, ravens, robins and blackbirds in our backyard, their backyard had parrots, mynah birds, cockatoos and other exotic birds.

Peter and I visited several customers and as our week was coming to a close, Peter and Gabrielle took me to Balmoral Beach or Immoral Beach, the locals called it Immoral Beach as many of its sun bathers were nude. From there we went to a seaside resort to fill out the week. As we sauntered past some boutiques, I happened to notice a game box of, you guessed it, Trivial Pursuit in a store window. I pointed it out to Peter and Gabriella, and they had not yet heard of it. I decided to buy them a copy as a thank-you gift from a Canadian living in the USA visiting Australia.

That evening we cracked open the box. A couple of friends of Peter and Gabrielle dropped in and we played Trivial Pursuit. I figured I was in no danger of losing as by now I’d been playing for many months.

I lost abysmally! The Aussies were just too damned intelligent for me. Perhaps it was because their knowledge of Australia was better than mine. That day the questions were about Australian Geography, Australian Sports and Leisure, Australian History and Australian TV and Movies!

How was I to know that those clever game making people had made an Australian version for the Down Under market?

Something not so Trivial in Australia – is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

With microphone in hand Larry gave us an overview of what baseball was and how it’s played. He did a fair job of explaining the game and its rules. He then went on to give the guys (most of us were guys, imagine that) an explanation of the unique way in which men entered and used the urinals at Wrigley Field. He explained that the urinals were long stainless steel troughs, perhaps twenty five feet or so in length along the wall. He went on to explain that it was very important to line up, get ready (he recommended pulling down the zipper while in line)  and then take your place at the left hand end of the trough, if it was busy, he warned that the men at the trough would move to the right while tinkling and you had to be finished before you reached the right hand end of the trough. If you were not finished then you had to struggle to freeze the stream and re-enter the line at the left hand end of the the trough.

Larry then went on to explain the technique one would use to negotiate for the purchase of beer in the stands. He explained that the beer salespeople would be carrying large trays of beer in cans and that they would be wearing a large button with the beer price marked on it. As it turned out, the buttons displayed in large print that the price was $4.00. Larry told his audience that the price displayed was an ‘asking’ price and that seasoned fans would always negotiate a better price. Larry told everyone that is sales were slow then they could expect to buy beer for $2.00 perhaps less. Remember, many of our visitors were from countries where bargaining is more common than here in the USA. It was pandemonium in the stands when the first beer salesman showed up and our sales manager from France whose English was less than perfect began to negotiate ….

Got a similar tale? Let me hear it!

Here’s something you don’t want to watch

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGmrWGBS_8Y

The Sales Meeting and the Trip to Wrigley Field is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

The photo below explains this fully in my opinion.

Rotary vs Fixed Wing Aircraft is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

The year is 1969 and I’m on the DEW Line at DYE-MAIN Cape Dyer on Baffin Island. It’s somewhat desolate. The DEW Line or Distant Early Warning line was a series of radar and communications sites across Canada’s north to watch for pesky Soviet missiles and aircraft coming over the pole. The sites communicated with each other and the main sites had back-bone communications south and sometime north to keep the US Military in the know.

DYE-MAIN was one of the larger sites and on a good day we had 100 or so men and very few women maintaining radar and communications equipment, an airstrip, many motor vehicles and a few polar bears.

We did lack entertainment from outside as we received a handful of movies flown in each week, limited radio and no TV. That satellite TV thing was still a few years away. The one constant source of music and news was AFRTS, Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. The AFRTS station nearest us was Radio Sondrestrom Air Base, a radar and communications site on the island of Greenland a little ways east of Cape Dyer. Radio Sondrestrom was played at every site across the DEW Line as we used one of the radio/telephone channels to get the signal across the DEW Line all the way to Alaska.

I think it was a Saturday when a DJ at the AFRTS station in Sondrestrom AB decided to help a charity raise some money by having people from across the DEW Line pledge cash to have certain songs played over the radio. People would phone the DJ using our many east west communication channels across the line and pledge to have a song played.

The fun began when someone called in and asked to have the song “Ma Na Ma Na” played and he perhaps pledged $5.00 or a similar amount someone else called and pledged a much larger amount to have Ma Na Ma Na played ten times in succession and this started a cavalcade of pledges when someone pledged a much larger amount to not have Ma Na Ma Na play for at least an hour.

You guessed it, a group of people from several sites banded together and pledged, I think it was $1000.00 if the DJ would play Ma Na Ma Na for the rest of the day.

Guess what! I still hum that tune from time to time. It’s amazing what twelve hours plus of the same song can do to your head! The version of the song we heard pre-dated the version created by the Muppets later in 1969.

The version we heard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExW48xz5yc4

Muppets Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdUeVAkzEas.

You can read more about Ma Na Ma Na at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mah_Nà_Mah_Nà

Ma Na Ma Na – The DEW Line 1969 is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

You see, there were these three ethnic people. (Many jokes begin with You see…)

Ethnic Person Number One says:

I love Easter because it’s that time of the year when the little bunny gets dressed up in that little red suit and puts Easter eggs under the Easter tree …

Ethnic Person Number Two interjects:

Wait a minute, I don’t know where you’re from but that’s totally wrong! Easter is the time of the year when the Easter Bunny gets dressed up in orange and black clothing and comes by your house looking for handouts …

Ethnic Person Number Three butts in and says:

Stop, Stop, Stop: You guys are both wrong, Easter is the time of the year when we celebrate that Jesus Chris died for our sins, was crucified, dead and buried and placed in a tomb. On the third day, he moved the stone covering his tomb, walked outside and saw his shadow and then disappeared for forty days and forty nights!

The Easter Bunny and the Three Ethic People is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

Look No % Key!

When electronic calculators were just coming on the market, they were quite a novelty and sometimes they actually worked. This is a story about my first calculator(s). It was about 1972 and the Bowmar electronic calculator hit the street. I went to Sears and bought one. I found a way to pay $124.95 which was a lot for me in those days. Today I remain an early adopter of technology. I probably always will. This first machine was very limited in capability.  It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. That’s all!

It worked for about two to three months when the battery would no longer hold a charge. I headed back to the store. On arrival the clerk looked at my calculator, and I was told they no longer carry that model. Technology was moving quickly. The new model available was essentially identical but had a percent key. One more button to play with. I was told that the new model was a different price and I immediately stiffened, only to hear that the new model was 99.95 rather than the 124.95 I had spent on the original. I left that day with a new calculator with a percent key and $25.00 plus tax! Not bad for a days work.!

You guessed it! The replacement calculator died in a few months, I can’t remember what happened, maybe the percent key got stuck when I spilled coke on it. Back to the store and the tale repeats itself. The model I had was no longer available. The latest and greatest now came with a bunch of new keys for the built in memory function and the price had dropped to $79.95. Yup! I got a new calculator and $20.00 plus tax back.

Buy one calculator for $124.95, trade it in twice and get a percent key. a bunch of memory keys, a calculator that worked and $55.00 back.

Not bad!

I love Sears!

The Calculator Story of 1972 is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

Please Click on the Image Below

Just Kids 1986 – The Performance is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwGRIG5GKNM

or click the link below

Creative Advertising

Sent to me by:

The Messenger

Creative Advertising -- from The Messenger of Silliness is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog