Zombies vs Bikes

So once a month people do this "Critical Mass" bike ride thing. You've possibly seen it in Toronto - all of a sudden dozens and dozens of cyclists swarm the streets on their bikes, taking the roads, and showing cars what it's like to be overwhelmed. It's an interesting idea. I'm all for biking whenever driving isn't necessary, so i appreciate the concept. I'm not much of a guerilla warrior, though.

You've probably also heard recently of people dressing up as zombies and storming bars, the Apple store in some part of America, etc. Again, i'm all about the zombies. If this happened when i was around, i would be afraid that like, say Buffy the Vampire slayer, i'd go on auto pilot zombie destructo mode. I warn my friends who do this around here: if you storm bar that i'm in, i may go into berserker mode. No offence!


But really, i was thinking this: hey zombies, why not storm a Critical Mass bike ride? They'd be the perfect target. While bikes are mobile, the cyclists would be so caught up in their own "we're messing with the rules of society" headspace that they'd be completely confused when a horde of zombies comes lurching/tearing around the corner. It would be "meals on wheels". And the motorists stuck in traffic due to the bikes would also be easy prey. I realize that many of the types of folks who might participate in one event would likely be the same type to participate in the other.

I'm not anti-cyclist. I'm just pro-zombie.

Mr Stabby

It sort of feels like i have stabby little needle thingies sticking my in my arms right now. Not "pins and needles" - just actual hurting stabbing pricks all over them.

What does this mean?

Crazy wooden parks

When i was a kid one of my favorite things to do was to go play at the park. By park, i mean monkey bars, swing sets, etc.

Back in the early 80s, there was a strange trend that occurred. Somehow, the engineers who designed children's parks were allowed to throw out ALL safety features & were permitted to build EXTREMELY dangerous wooden structures capable of injuring even the most cautious of children. Have you ever seen one of those movies, where guys are training to be Navy Seals or Green Berets, and they have to go through a crazy obstacle course, risking life and limb? Well, that is what these creative wooden parks were like. They were amazingly fun, but also really dangerous. I'm convinced that in the early 80s, the Park Design Engineering School was taken over by Nihlistic S&M Anarchists, and that they were told to create parks that combined elements of DisneyLand, Mistress X's Dominatrix Dungeon, Dante's Inferno and the US Army Special Forces Training facility.

Examples: -the park by our house was actually 2 parks built side by side. One of them had a slide that actually was a misnomer, because you definitely couldn't actually "slide" down it. It was very rough. Maybe that's why so many kids used to spit all over it - to make it slipperier. Gross.
-this same park had one of those super long cable things, where there's a 50 foot long metal cable strung between a raised platform and a pole. You would hold on to a special device that contained greased wheels that would slide rapidly along the pole. In theory, you should have been able to get from A to B rapidly, but instead you usually got stuck halfway, or fell off, or got grease on your hands and slipped off and crashed to the ground. Kids rarely made it past the halfway mark on the cable, but i recall actually taking a serious run at it and zipping very quickly down the line. I zoomed past the halfway point and thought "Wow! I'm gonna make it the whole length of the rope!". Of course, as i traveled at approximately 40 kms per hour, i realized that the cable simply ended, embedded in a large wooden pole. These thoughts didn't prevent me from crashing into the beam like a drunken stuntman...
-the same park had these beams that were about 8 feet off the ground, with ladders going up to them. They had a railing on one side of the beam. The idea was for kids to climb up the ladders, and walk in a sort of shuffle across the beam - with only 1 side supported by the railing. I cannot tell you how many friends of mine fell off that thing...of course, they were sitting ducks for things like dirt bombs, rocks, etc while they were up there, but still.

I joke about all of this, but there were some pretty bad accidents that happened at parks like this. I recall falling about 10-12 feet down a vertical plastic tube slide that was perpendicular to the ground. It had foot and handholds cut in it, but for some reason, this tube, unlike it's angled slide-brothers, was actually incredibly slippery. I got the wind knocked out of me and cut my head up, but was ok. My brother had a ligament ripping accident occur on one of those "bouncy bridges" at a park in Toronto. That was quite terrifying. One minute, he was storming the beaches of Normandy, the next, hanging upside down by one foot, knee bending freely in all directions. Really bad.

I haven't done any research on this, but i imagine that eventually (and probably to this day) various organizations and groups have protested the building of these crazy wooden parks. Playing in them reminded me of some of my other favorite childhood past times, such as playing in 1/2 built construction sites. Very fun, but very risky too.

In the nest of the wasps

I just found a wasp's nest in the shed. It's active.

Tonight, at 20:00 hours, i am going to go on a covert mission to destroy it.

Wish me luck.


PS: if you're a hardcore bizarro animal activist and you disapprove, let me know and i'll put the nest under your pillow after i remove it. Or at the very least, tell me where your shed is and i'll put it there.

hot dog hell

Today Mr N and i walked by the hot dog guy (the one that used to be a sexy Euro-accented girl for the past few years but is now a gross old bald). He started humming Brittany Spears tunes as we got close to him, getting louder and louder.

He had no customers.

Pet Peeve

I don't know who coined the phrase "pet peeve", but it seems to me that it should probably really be "petty peeve". Have you ever noticed that most people's pet peeves are actually quite nitpicky, jerky and really quite petty? I include myself here.

We're talking about things like "ooh i really hate it when someone leaves their shoes with the laces tucked in" or "ooh my pet peeve is people who don't make their beds". What concern is it of yours whether or not someone tuck their laces in to their shoes? Are you going to be putting their shoes on any time soon? Or whether they make their own bed? Are you planning on sleeping over with them? Why the hell do you even care?

Again, i'm just as guilty as anyone of you. And you KNOW that you're guilty!!

Really, we should be saying, "i know this makes me look like a totally anal retentive jerkoff, but i hate it when people walk and eat at the same time, and it's totally my problem and not theirs because i'm a total & complete freak who can't mind their own business".

So yeah, maybe it should be "petty peeve".

But maybe this is my pet peeve...hmm.

Guilty! As charged.

Some random thoughts on hot dogs

Here are some random, unrelated thoughts on hot dogs.

I cannot remember the last time i ate a hot dog. That is not a euphemism for anything. I just cannot recall.

I almost ate hot dogs when we had the big blackout 3 or so years ago. Marc Nash and Mike Wilhelm and i managed to get our hands on some food from a corner store (the power was out everywhere and most things were closed). I had very little food at home other than peanut butter, and Mike's allergic to that, so it wasn't really good for us all to eat. We got some cheese, hot dogs, bread and a few other items, and cooked them up on the bbq. I didn't eat the dogs. Luckily we found a bottle of old red wine and i ate that instead.

I don't know what i have against hot dogs. I eat sausages (again not a euphemism), and they're both made of gross stuff, i'm sure. I'm 1/2 Italian/Sicilian, and am used to eating spicy sausages and stuff like that. I think the difference between a sausage and a hot dog is that a hot dog is like a sausage that has been neutered. It has no guts (well, literally i guess it does...). Sausages are proud, bold and macho. Hot Dogs are not. They are wussies. It's like comparing, say, the Pogues to Great Big Sea.

From a comedy point of view, if we're talking "singular", then i think that hot dogs are inherently funnier than sausages. I'm not sure why. But - if we're talking plural, you can't beat a link of sausages for visual comedy impact, especially if you pull them out of your inner breast pocket, one by one.

I like veggie dogs very much, even though i know they're made from rinds, peels and fake bacon that they sweep up off the tofu factory floor.

When i was a kid i used to eat hot dogs right out of the package, without cooking them. I was told that i would get worms if i did this, but since i'd also been told i'd get worms from eating too many grapes, Kool Aid powder, watching Gilligan's Island, and not going to church, i didn't believe it.

My dad used to bbq hot dogs until they were so black and charred that they would shatter if you dropped them. He did this because he said they "tasted like candy" when they were burned like this. I sort of imagined that maybe when he grew up in America back in the '50s, candy must have been made out of old charcoal briquettes with ashes sprinkled on top. Oddly enough, i liked eating them this way and they did taste pretty good (maybe not like candy so much though).

There is a hot dog vendor outside of work. For the past few years, they've had this sort of vapid, scowling yet sexy lady with an unidentifiable accent selling the dogs/sausages. But this year, she's not around, and instead they have this sort of crazy dirty gross guy selling them. Their business is NOT booming this year as it has in the past. I wonder if they will last. Actually, i am kind of hoping that they will close up, and pretzel vendor will move in, like in Philadelphia or NY NY.

One pet peeve i have (and it's completely ridiculous) is when people put ketchup on their sausage or hot dog, or even veggie dog. I really cannot explain why this bugs me, and it's unfair for me to feel this way, but i think that you should never put ketchup on these things...and yet, for some reason, i think it's ok to put ketchup on a hamburger. I have no explanation for this, other than the fact that it seems like something only a 6 year old should get away with. I'm neurotic.

That is what i think about hot dogs. In case you ever are asked.

401 vs Mother's Day

Well, the 401 ruined Mother's Day.

I had told my folks that i would show up around mid-afternoon. We were going to have dinner around 4ish, so i started to leave town around 1:00. I had to drive around to various places to find cilantro. I eventually found some, and headed out down Gordon Street to get to the 401. This was probably around 1:30. By the time i got within a kilometre of the entrance to the highway, though, traffic was completely at a standstill. I sat in the line for a while, and eventually got close enough to see that the eastbound traffic was at a standstill. Not moving. At all.

I pulled a u-turn, Dukes of Hazard style (with a touch of Knight Rider thrown in), and headed towards the Guelph Line entrance to the highway. On the way i turned on the radio and heard that a tractor trailer truck (or "triple t"*, as we like to call them) had exploded (or "esploded", as Ricky Ricardo liked to call it). The explosion had shut down all eastbound lanes heading towards Toronto, from Hwy 6 North through to Milton. Traffic was jammed and not moving for many kms...so i turned around and went back to 32 Delmar. I called my mom and told her about this. Every 1/2 hour for the next few hours, i checked traffic on the 'net to see how things were progressing. The radio had claimed that the lanes had been reopened, but another report on the 'net stated that they'd reopened the shoulder of the highway as a lane. I figured this would still be nightmarish.

I felt a little bad about turning around, but it seemed the thing to do.

Later that day, Jay wrote on my Facebook wall, and said that he had been trying to go from hwy 6 to Guelph Line on the 401 - one exit over that would usually take 5 or 10 minutes - and he got stuck on the highway for almost 3 hours. I instantly felt better about having not gone.

It did feel a little weird, though to go to see "28 Weeks Later" - a scary non-zombie zombie flick. In this movie, the husband abandons the mother to the zombies, and then she ends up passing on the zombie virus to everyone. Not much of a mother's day for her! There were also a lot of stopped cars on congested highways in that movie, as a result of mass exodus in an escape attempt from the crazed rage people. It made me rethink my plans for what to do when the zombies eventually show up here. Actually, i began rethinking all that stuff when i first saw "the Road Warrior" back in the 80s. I'd stay off the highways. My plan has always been, like the guys who get away in "the Great Escape", to either escape on bicycle or boat.

Anyway, hopefully none of you(r) moms caught a plague or anything.


*similar in concept to the nickname of a guy i went to school with named Joe who wore a jean jacket, hence his behind the back nickname "triple j" meaning "jean jacket Joe"...i don't know if he knew we called him this (it wasn't an insult or anything). He made a wicked pizza and was a good guy.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFRIDAY!!!!

That's all, really.

Jericho again

Jericho is one of the best shows on television right now, and i don't know a single other person who watches it. I cannot find ANYONE who watches it.

America nukes itself. That's the premise. The "terrorists" are American. Tell me that's not subversive as Hell! The plot keeps shifting, so i don't know exactly what's going on, but it's a freaking show where America nukes itself!!! Hello? Stop watching Survivor! It's meaningless!

Case in point: in last night's episode, they flew an American flag that had the stripes going up and down, and only contained about 20 stars on it. It was almost Satanic looking!

Transwhat

Oh, and tomorrow Mr N and i are going to go into the healthfood store and ask if they "sell any trans-fat".

Just to see how they react.

Teeth are not for scraping...

I have probably written about this before, and will probably write about it again, but i hate going to the dentist.

I am not "afraid" of the dentist. I do not hate the pain, or fillings or things like that.

It's the so called "maintenance" and "cleaning" that the assistants do. I realize that this is only their job, but anyone who sticks a sharp object in my mouth and makes it bleed is not putting themselves in my good books. I really have an issue with the sensations of having someone scrape my teeth with a pick. It's really jarring, first thing in the morning. Especially when they miss and hit my gums repeatedly.

I will say this, and most of you popsicle chompin', ice cream chewin' mofos probably will just go huh? but the EASIEST and CHEAPEST that they could do at the dental office to make me happier is this: stop chilling the god damned water before you spray it on my teeth. My teeth are VERY sensitive to cold water. I can only describe it as this: when you spray cold water on my molars, it's like having someone drive carpet tacks into your gums. It actually hurts that much. Before someone writes in with a mircale story about using Sensodyne, it doesn't work. Before someone writes in and mentions that it uses potassium blah blah blah to bond with the blah blah blah, it doesn't work. If someone writes in and says it does work, they're either lying, or one of those people who think that reflexology works*, or truly they didn't really have very sensitive teeth in the first place. I tried using that stuff for years and it really made no difference for me at all. It's like Head and Shoulders shampoo...

I know i sound like a bitch here, but come on, my gums are still bleeding and i haven't had a coffee yet. I'm not that cruel, to drink coffee and then go into the dentist's office just to be spiteful.

Don't get me wrong, my dentist is a nice guy, and his assistants are too. I appreciate their hard work and preventative maintenance. I do. It's just that they've chosen the profession that has to hurt to heal...


*it feels good. I'm not so sure it works. This statement might cause an uproar. Do your worst, hippies!

Gardening at night

Still being in my first year of house ownership, there are many things that i am unfamiliar with and don't know about.

Gardening is always something that i avoided at any cost. I would feign injury to avoid gardening as a child. I would, for example, have a sudden attack of the croup when asked to weed the carrot patch. Now i realize that this makes me sound lazy, but it's not necessarily as you might think. The truth of the matter is that i strongly dislike both being out in the sun, and also don't like being out in the heat. I think REM had people like me in mind when they penned the song "Gardening at Night". I would love to garden at night! And i may do so (read about the mower below). I don't mind being in the sun if i'm riding a bike through a forest, or if there is a large body of water that i can periodically plunge into. Gardening offers neither of these benefits, typically.

Of course this doesn't mean that i am morally opposed to Gardening. I think it's a wonderful past time, best pursued by others. I think it is neato that people grow their own fruits & vegetables in their backyard. I think that one can grow flowers very tastefully, and this can make your home look nice. Now that i have a house, i think that it's inevitable that i dip my toe into the icy bathtub that is Gardening.

I hope that none of you expect me to actually begin GROWING things. That step is several rungs higher than i'm prepared to go. No, gardening for me has begun with the lawn.

I do not ever expect to have a pristine golf green lawn, nor do i want one. Truly, the best i can hope for is that i don't end up with a dirt pile in my front yard. To this end, i went out and bought a lawnmower the other day. I am something of an environmentalist (without being annoyingly fanatical about it), so i bought a reel mower - one of those old push mowers. It's a Scotts Classic model, here is a picture of it:

It has 5 blades, runs very quietly and has a very high adjustable height - higher than most other mowers. This is a good thing, i am told (by the internet). You could cut the grass early in the morning and not disturb anyone. I used the mower the other day and it handled quite easily, and did a pretty good job of cutting the grass. It won't do it as crisply as a gas or electric mower, but it does a pretty decent job, and is quieter and more fuel efficient. They don't tell you this on the box, but reel mowers actually do take fuel - i find a bottle of beer makes it run quite well, though on occasion it may require 2. Even with sharpening costs (if you can't learn to do it yourself, that is), you're paying much less to own & maintain one of these puppies. My mom had hers sharpened the other day for $30, and you typically don't have to do it every year. The manufacturer states that you won't need to sharpen for the first 2 years. And truly - it's easier to use than a big gas mower as it weighs less, and the resistance offered by it isn't any greater than a gas mower, really.

The other thing that i did was buy a dandelion/weed puller. Mr N recommended it to me. Here it is:

I would imagine that to dandelions, this thing must appear to be a weapon of mass destruction. It's very easy to use. You just put it on the weed, step on it and pull it out of the ground. It seemed to get the roots with the majority of dandelions that i pulled last night (i pulled about 70 dandelions). I know that i will need to use it pretty much every other day in order to try to keep the lawn weed free - an impossible task in itself. Again, i am not obsessive about weeds and stuff like that, but i do recognize that others are and it is always best to conform a little (despite what filthy rich punk rock stars might tell you). The other thing is that i think that if you cut down on weeds, maybe it helps with allergies. I have no scientific proof to back myself up here, of course. At any rate, i highly recommend this weed puller thing. You can use it whilst standing upright, and trust me, this will save your back and knees much pain when you end up removing weed after weed after weed from your yard and garden. I also suspect that the tool actually helps to aerate your lawn as well, but i'm no expert.

If anyone wants to contradict me on any of this, feel free to post a comment here, and then i'll delete it.

Ok i won't delete it.

It goes without saying that i am against pesticides, as a general rule. I just don't think my neighbor's kids should have to suffer breathing in toxic crap just because i want my lawn to look like a golf green (which as i stated, i don't). That's a little selfish, really. Plus i have better pursuits to pursue!

So that is my foray into gardening thus far. Cutting the lawn and weeding it. Next i will have to tackle the hedges. That should prove comical!

Buddy can you spare a quarter?

Remember that story that came out last year, the one about the American contractors claiming that Canadian spys had implanted a secret device that could track their movement and locations? Well, here is a picture of what they THOUGHT was a secret device:


It's true. Read this story on CNN.

I am not a spy, but i think that after years of watching "Get Smart", various James Bond movies (not the Roger Moore ones), reading "Jacob Two-two and the Hooded Fang" and watching 2 episodes of "24", i believe that i am more qualified than the American spy experts.

First, if i were a spy, i would actually not think it was a good idea to implant a secret nanotech radio device into a quarter. Why? Because people spend quarters all the time. I think that a quarter on my person has a life time expectancy of about 10 minutes - before i make a phone call or buy a coffee or donut.
I think that if i wanted to plant a tracking device onto an American Contractor, it would probably look more like a Spidey Tracer. I understand that there is some logic to making a spy bug look like an everyday object, but coinage is a little too everyday to be practical. It would sort of be like making "nano-kleenex"...

Second, if i WERE dopey enough to put a tracking device into something like a quarter, i wouldn't disguise it by painting it BRIGHT RED and putting it DEAD CENTRE into a coin. They printed (minted?) up millions of these commemorative poppy quarters. A quarter that actually used tracking nanatechnology would be very expensive to make. We're not a rich country. We aren't fake-rich-on-credit like the States. We cannot afford to get involved in costly wars, or invent all sorts of crazy weapons and gadgets in order to spy on people. We can't even afford to keep real maple syrup in most of our pancake restaurants!! And, do we actually even have REAL nanotechnology yet - and i'm not talking that crap that Scientific American reading geeks call nanotechnology - i mean actual real tiny robots like in sci-fi novels that can regrow limbs for you and stuff? Does real nanotechnology - and i mean the good fancy kind - actually even exist? (And if you're going to write in after popping onto Google, yeah, i read the first thing that popped up too (wikipedia, anyone) so don't bother!)

Third, why would we spy on the Americans? Why? We know EXACTLY what is going on in their country already because they show it all on their tv shows, and you can fill in the blanks by applying reverse logic to CNN broadcasts! Plus they have more tanks, guns, lasers, nanotechnology (!), computers, soldiers, weapons of mass destruction, internets, ships, planes, IHOPs and paranoia than us. We wouldn't stand a chance in a war against them, so why would we spy on them? I remember when i was a kid, there was a bully who could & would kick my ass. Would i gossip about him, or try to be sneaky around him? No! Why would i bother, if he could kick my ass anytime he wanted to? My plan was to not give him any reason to be angry at me. If he'd heard i was actually spying on him or gossiping, he'd have been ticked. Same goes here. If the Americans wanted Canada, they would pretty much just take it. Of course they'd never be able to deal with our winters (or rather lack of spring) and the lack of IHOPs would send them screaming south. Plus our beer would get them too drunk, just like that episode of Star Trek where Scotty drinks the bad Aliens under the table. Scotty, or rather James Doohan, by the way, was Canadian.


Fourth, why the hell would anyone want to track the whereabouts of American contractors of any kind? They're either in Canada, or they're in the States. And so what if they're in Canada? What would the so called Canadian Spy Club (CSC, not to be confused with the CBC [Canadian Bi Club]) do even if they could track the whereabouts of these American dudes? Here's how the conversation might have gone...
Canadians: "Well sir, we've tracked the whereabouts of these American Contractors to Moosejaw. We're not sure what kind of mischief they're getting up to, eh, but we think they're headed for the trolley car or Mayor Dale McBain's house".

Fifth, i can't really expect the average American to know what the Poppy is supposed to symbolize here in Canada - we can't really expect them to recognize it as anything. Expecting them to know anything about our symbolism & history would be like expecting us Canadians to know about George Washington and the cherry tree, the Mason-Dixon line, Pearl Harbour, and that flag planting thing at Iwo Jima.

And really, every good Canadian knows that we infiltrated America years ago, with operation "our comedians, actors and musicians our better than yours and we're sending them your way".

Except Nickleback. No one knows what happened there. You can have them.



(BTW - most of my relatives are exempt from this little rant. Most of them actually know a thing or two about their neighbors to the north.)

Your moral dilemma - solved!!

I like to think that i sometimes come up with interesting solutions to moral dilemmas. I will give you an example of this, but first, i'll start by recounting some of the times that i've found "free money".

I used to hang out at the Trasheteria a lot in the early 90s. I think that i typically spent 2-3 nights a week there, hanging out with Nash, Cal, MC Question, and all sorts of other sorts. One of the tricks that i learned there (and feel free to cop this one) was the "how to find free money in a bar trick". Basically, the gist of it is that you find the darkest, sleaziest bar possible, and hang out there all night. Closing time is supposed to be (or at least back then was) at 1:00, but it always seemed to occur an hour later at 2 am. You wait until 2 am and the lights come up. People are typically intoxicated, wandering like shambling zombie corpses in search of their coats and cab mates. It's at precisely this moment that you yourself start wandering quickly around the room, looking down at the floor. That is where i found most of my "free money" back when i was a starving student. I recommend looking near to the bar, and on the dance floor. You'd be amazed at how much cash gets dropped by drunk people! Maybe some of you youngsters out there can apply this little gem of knowledge. Trust me, it made me a lot of money back then. I used to find things like watches, jewellery and so forth. Those things you can actually return to the lost and found, though.

The other day an unnamed friend informed me that she was having a moral dilemma. She had apparently found a good chunk of money by the side of the road. This had happened on a busy street in Toronto. She also found a crumpled up parking ticket, which had someone's license plate # on it as well as a fine. Her conundrum was fairly simple - she found a large amount of money but felt badly about this, and felt that somehow she should try to contact someone to see if she could return this money to its rightful owner. Obviously there are a few issues with this - how do you determine who is the rightful owner? It might have been the person who crumpled up the ticket, or it might have been someone who lived in the area where the cash was found, but really, who knows? If you were to call the police and say, "i found $$$, what should i do with it?", we both know that the cash would simply be put towards the donut fund.

My creative and guilt free solution to this problem was simple and direct. Simply take the parking ticket, take a small portion of the found money, and pay the ticket! It's that easy. If the person who owned the cash actually crumpled the ticket up and threw it on the ground, they're a scumbag and don't deserve the money back - so you paying their ticket for them is an added bonus. If they didn't crumple the ticket up themselves (maybe a random passer by did so), you are doing good in secret for them - they lose the money that they dropped, but the parking ticket doesn't end up going to court when they fail to pay it.

I believe that my solution restores balance to the universe, while allowing my friend to benefit by keeping most of the found fortune.

If you have any moral dilemma, please feel free to post them here and i will easily solve them for you.

And i'll do it for free!

Every Package in its place

I am not sure that i understand how the postal service works, or other delivery services.

My house has a front door and a side door, both with screen doors. You can put a small parcel in between the screen door and regular door, at either area. I also have one of those olde fashioned milk-box cubby-hole door thingies. You open it up and there's a little space in there, about the size of, say, a 12 pack of beer. You can easily fit most parcels in there.

But much of the time, when i get a package delivered here through the mail, they just sort of plop it down on the driveway, kind of close to the door. I don't understand why they wouldn't put it between the doors or in the milk-box mail-box. I could put a note up but i don't think that they would actually read it.

I think the post office actually wants my items to get stolen. They must have a scam of some kind going.

I've come up with a solution, though. I think that if i put beer and cookies inside the milk-box (a la Santa), maybe the posties would be more inclined to put my packages in there. I'm all for bribery in this world. I truly believe in it. I think that if you want something done properly, don't do it yourself, but rather bribe someone else to do it for you. By "bribe" i don't mean pay them. I mean pay them, and then on top of that slip them something extra.

We all like to get a little extra now and again, don't we?