So, I'm cruising around the internet looking for pictures of kittens and monkeys getting along when all of a sudden I happen across one of those delightfully helpful internet advertisements. Now please understand my situation here; I consider myself an afficianado of marketing, holding several awards and titles for convincing people to give unto me their sweet, precious items in exchange for drawings of a talking ham I have dubbed "Benedetto".


This is not Benedetto. For an autographed picture of Benedetto, please send $18, a broken saxophone, or a Sammy Hagar CD to my house, preferably delivered via strip-o-gram.

Being the expert I am in this field, I am doomed to sometimes be overly offended when stumbling upon an improper ad. This time was different though. This ad was SO retarded, it almost circled around and became amazingly good again (like an M. Night Shamamalyalan movie or a video of a guy riding in a fridge pulled behind a truck, and then the fridge flips over and the guy goes flying). UNLIKE an M. Night Shamalamylanan movie though, this ad simply comes out and says OI, LOOKIT THIS AND GET ON WITH IT instead of making me wait 4 hours to get to the damn point. Are you ready for it? Here it is:


HAVE ONLINE JOB. IS ONLY DOLLARS. PUT IT WALLET, GO DISCO. HAPPY YOU.

I mean, come on. I remember a time when internet ads meant something. Who is going to click on that? No one. That's who. No one and a bag of chips. And why is this? Because it is missing some important features of internet ads. Years of "research" have been conducted, showing that none of the internet's sweaty, pourous denizens will click on an ad unless it has atleast one (if not all) of the following features:

- The ad has to be in flash and be flashy, so people know to look at it instead of whatever they were just looking for (also called the "stupid goddamn crows like shiny stuff" effect)
- The ad has to offer unbelievably fabulous prizes. People LOVE prizes. They go helium threefold bananas for that shit. In all likelihood the ad on the other side of the page from yours is going to be offering a PS3 that gives blowjobs, so YOUR ad better be offering a gold plated mansion. That gives blowjobs. And a free sundae for afterwards. Yum!
- The ad has to be some sort of game. Who is more trustworthy? The jackass who spent 2 seconds typing into Mariopaint to make their ad (see above) or the guy who spent a whole half hour copy and pasting source code and images to make a sweet "shoot a duck or perhaps a turkey if it is near Christmas" game for you to play?
- The ad should also use javascript to detect where the user is living. This gives the illusion of being personal, directed at the viewer specially. It also makes the ad seem like it is magic, and everyone LOVES magic (Houdini got so many ladies I bet).
- If you can't do any of these things, at least open up a grade 2 english book and look up what the "subject" of a sentence is and why it is important. You can't go wrong with things like sentence structure. ESPECIALLY when conveying ideas.

"But Ben," you are thinking heavily, "where did this most audacious of marketing ploys take you?" Well, I didn't click the thing, but I suspect it was to a cam-whore site for fat people because only fat people would have the clumsiness to accidentally click on it. If you ever see this ad and feel braver than I, click it and get back to me on where it goes. There might even be a picture of a certain talking ham* in it for you!

Proceeding to GO DISCO,
Ben Nicholls

* - offer only valid with coupon or Sammy Hagar CD.

Pretend, for a moment, that you are in a magical place of your own choosing. It could be a meadow full of beautiful flowers, it could be a carnival where all the rides are free and there are no lines, it could be a pie factory where the freezer just broke and all the pies have to be eaten immediately. Whatever tickles your fancy. Do you feel that feeling? That serenity? That bliss? Good.

My work is nothing like that.

I work in a big government office building, and my job is to have an excel spreadsheet open while reading wikipedia articles on icebergs. I also proofread paperwork for some reason. "But Ben," you are definitely asking for sure, "why are you doing this instead of continuing your studies at Sexy Chef College?" There is one simple reason: I love money. I also love -40 degree weather and castles though, which is why I got a job in Ottawa.

Now, for those of you who live anywhere but Canada, you probably don't know where Ottawa is or whether it really exists or not. I can assure you it does. It exists so hard that it even has facts that I can make a list of for your convenience.

- Ottawa is located very far north. Ottawa was actually founded because the site was originally thought to be the North Pole. This was proven false in 1991 though, which resulted in the city-wide closure of dozens of toy factories and reindeer farms
- Ottawa is the site of the Rideau Canal, which freezes over in the winter to become both world's largest skating rink and, in my experience, the world's deadliest slip and slide.
- Ottawa is also the site of the Parliament Buildings, which are the fanciest buildings in North America according to the Elton John Fancitude Index (with an astounding score of 97 in the "pointy as hell" category)


Shown: Parliament Buildings. Not Shown: -45 degree weather and streets filled with frozen hobo corpses

Anyways, Ottawa has treated me well. This town has a McDonalds and a bowling alley and a pie shop and everything. Every week I discover something new about the city. Lets just hope I discover where the boot store is soon; my mismatched dress shoes seem to be no match for the mountain of snow, ice, and discarded Snuggies that lies between my house and my work every day.

Cowering under a blanket for warmth because my house has the equivalent of a fat guy doing jumping jacks in the living room when it comes to heat,
Ben Nicholls

There once was a wise man who said "You don't know how much you want to do stuff until you don't have it anymore, because it broke." Or whatever. This man's name was Lenny Kravitz and he was singing about American Women at the time, but his message rings true to me right now for a very imortant reason: I was without my computer for over a month.

Now this doesn't exactly sound like a travesty. There are plenty of things that would have been much worse to go a super-fortnight without:

- Toilet
- Favourite Banjo
- Teletoon
- DVD Boxset of Robocop
- Second Favourite Banjo
- Brazillian Hooker Named Evalitaxxx
- Oxygen


No one should ever be without their weekly dose of 1987's grittiest action thriller suspense mystery romance thriller film.

Maybe you are wondering how it happened? How the indestructible artifact that is my laptop caught its electronic ailment? Well it goes like this: I was walking in the park, throwing bread for the pigeons and hobos and whatever, when all of a sudden I heard a cry. It sounded as if it came from the bushes, so I readied my mighty fists for fisticuffmanship and approached. As I grew closer the cries became louder and louder, until they were a screaming Rihanna of pain in my ear.

Then a hippie punched my laptop.

As my furious fists exploded upon his fragile, tofu-filled carcass, I cried a single tear for my MSN friends, a single tear for my last.fm profile, and a pair of tears for both of you, dear IMLAW readers, for I knew that I would be away from my interhome for many moons. But I am returned now, with big plans for the future. Like a website about hella beers. I know, I can't believe no one has thought of it either.

Glad to once again be connected to 700 million people who can't spell,
Ben Nicholls

Fate, she can be a cruel mistress. She can spill your coffee, she can get your shirt all muddy, and if she's feeling particularly bitchy she can hit your house with a comet (or a comet-shaped piece of frozen airplane poo). But every once in a while she decides that a stroll around the block in her being-nice-for-a-change pants would be nice, and she gives you a little present. This happened yesterday, and it happened to me.

"Oh my," you might definitely be saying, "tell us quickly about your stroke of good fortune!" First I must set the stage. The day was a hard one. Finals time is here, so I awoke at 8:30am, dressed, ate some food, and began studying. And it was hardcore. Chalkboards cringed under my furious scribblings. Ten hours later I returned to my abode ready to eat a terrible burger and waste the night away watching the Star Wars marathon that's been on TV for the last week. And then it happened. My roommate opened a box of chicken wings and inside was something... something unexpected... something for me...

SUPERBOWL BRACELET!

A bracelet, proclaiming my support for superbowl 43, FINALLY IT IS MINE. Needless to say, this is the happiest day of my life. And that's saying something, I've had some happy days before:

- One time I got to ride a llama at a zoo.
- One time I found a robot in a cave that taught me how to play the guitar.
- On several occasions I've managed to avoid getting scurvy.
- One day a couple years ago I was really sad about something, but then I saw Demolition Man (with Wesley Snipes) and it made it all better.

But my new bracelet beats it all. I must admit though... I'm sort of sad at the fact that I can forsee no event happening in my life that will top yesterday. Has my life peaked? Have I jumped the shark? I sure hope not; I need more stories for my future best-selling book of memoirs (tentatively titled "Six-packs and Packing Sixes: The Humble Story of a Humble Super-Millionaire Mayor").

Happy That Chicken Wings Exist For The First Time Ever,
Ben Nicholls

It's that time of year again! The snow is falling, the kiddies are putting on their scarves and mittens, and all the little physics students are curled up around their laptops, crying and wishing they'd picked an arts major. That's correct, it's finals time and once again I am scared beyond my wits. If "academics" was a concrete object instead of being a concept, mine would be on fire right now. That's okay though; I happen to like fire, and to tell the truth I've stomped out bigger fires than this before. At least this time around I have a couple courses that I'm actually profficient in instead of all of my courses being metaphorical trainwrecks. Trainwrecks from which I'm supposed to build working spaceships. With my hands, feet and eyes tied behind my back. Oh god I hate metaphors.


What this train lacked in "brakes", I currently lack in "knowing what the hell probability flux is for."

In other news, I actually managed to find someone gullible enough to hire me. My resume pretty much said nothing except "I USED TO WERK IN A MAYONAYZ FACTRY" and apparently that's all the Government of Canada needed. So I'm off to Ottawa to work for a very non-zero salary. I don't exactly know what I will be doing yet, but I'm pretty sure it involves a) eating poison and b)trying not to die. This is awesome for several reasons:

- I get a sweet security clearance badge, which means I can look up top secret files on things to add to my book about decorative cakes.
- Using my ninja skills, I could steal poisons and sell them to Black-Market Jimmy for great profits
- After my 4 months of working there I will be completely immune to all poisons, allowing me to finally drink that delicious drain cleaner that's been taunting me from beneath the sink.
- I could get promoted to Prime Minister (you know, if I flexed and stuff).

Of course, this is if I don't die. I figure though that if I haven't died yet, it is likely I never will. Let's hope that is true.

Loves you THIS much,
Benjamin Nicholls

Yesterday I had a scary experience. After walking around a stupid mall buying stupid fancy schmancy interview clothes with my precious stupid money, I was in a hellishly thirsty deathgrip of thirst. I get home and remember that for the last week I've been lugging around in my bookbag a delicious Rockstar Energy Drink, the origin of which I can't remember. Now, Rockstar holds a special place in my heart. And by "holds" I actually mean "destroyed", because for about 8 months I decided to drink about a litre and a half of the stuff every day. This in all likelihood burned away the last of the healthy cells in my body and replaced them with small cardboard advertisements for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, so I don't exactly look back on this time as my golden years.

Anyways, yesterday I decided to crack this mystery can open and down its delicious contents. I took a single sip, and proceeded to let out the longest "aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" of all time. It was the same sound that smokers make after lighting up for the first time in hours, that feeling that's like someone just turned off your gravity. It was heaven.

This got me thinking though: maybe I am like a smoker. Maybe I've been secretly addicted to this stuff for the last 3 years without knowing it, and my numerous inadequacies are simply byproducts of a very very long withdrawl period. Is that even possible? I tell myself I am silly, that this is stupid, that I couldn't possibly be addicted to something with such a stupid name. And yet, I somehow convinced myself to buy 2 more cans today, and I am drinking one as we speak (they were on sale! Screw you all!).

Maybe they have clinics for this jazz. Who knows. All I know is that taurine is delicious and it hasn't killed me yet. Then again, the same would go for a car made of licorice.

Refusing to Make Sense Any Longer,
Benjamin Nicholls

It is a busy time! Those of you who drive tractors and eat cheese out of a tube might not know this, but September marks the beginning of the academic school year, and as a result I've been shipped off to an institution that stole all my money in exchange for brain-knowledge. In addition to expanding my brain, my school is also trying its darnedest to get me into a job for a little while. This is called "Co-op", and as far as I can tell is mainly a way to keep me from playing hackeysack in the middle of the engineering building all year.

Unfortunately for me though the jobs aren't just doled out like so much of Grandma's coleslaw. You have to apply for the damn things and go to interviews and wear pants like a professional motherfucker. This is a problem for 3 reasons:

- I am unqualified for pretty much every job that doesn't involve shovelling feces into a bin
- I am competing against about 80 000 people, all of which are made of science and calculators and wisdoms
- I have a nervous tick where upon seeing a man wearing a tie I am forced to kick him in the face

So this leaves me with few options. Despite my numerous deficiencies I've managed to apply for several jobs ranging from the mundane (studying sea ice) to the exhilirating (mapping sea ice). So everyone wish me some luck in getting interviews, and in return I may be able to mail you an illegal piece of a glacier to hide your weed in*.

Signed like 80 times,
Ben Nicholls

* Ain't no one gonna look in a glacier, dude.

Good time-of-day, faithful reader. As summer begins to think about coming to a close for all of us unfortunate enough to be in a brain institution (read: school, or perhaps asylum), I find myself looking back on these precious sun-filled days. Have I wasted them? Have I treasured them and spent them punching hobos and eating bratwurst? Well, the answer to both of those questions is certainly a resounding 'no' (unfortunately), but here is what I have done:

STONETIME: While not sleeping, eating, or wrestling with any number of large forest creature, I decided to allow a man to pay me money to lift trillion-pound pieces of granite up a scaffold. I also got to be a human cement mixer, and occasionally I got to throw broken tape-measures into a cornfield. Also, the people at the jobsite own a kennel and I got to play with husky puppies! We named them all synonyms for 'poopy', and they were delightful.

GITTARS: Using what I assume was accidental gypsy magic, I convinced some friends to let me be the lead guitarist in their pseudo-psycho-glam-alterna-funk band Dazzler. Considering I am primarily a bassist and the guitar I have been relegated to is a 70 dollar Walmart special, my hooks are certain to rock anyone off their pants (assuming they are sitting on their pants at the time).

BEARTIME: I done went camping up in the woods. A delightful 15 hour drive, in which I got to listen to all manners of my father's country music, and we were there. I fished all the fish, I burned all the wood, I fought all the bears, and I won all the gold. It was a great trip.

SNOOTABOOKER: You guys might not know this, but it has been my dream for a long time to own an island in the pacific and turn it into a factory where we make high quality novelty wind chimes with pictures of Mel Brooks on them. But to do this I need a lot of money, so I decided to get rich by writing a book. It is tentatively titled "The Big Goddamn Book What Where Ben Done Tells Ya How To Be A Gentleman". Put simply, it's a Snooty Gent book and so far it is awesome. It will have illustrations, and words, and even pages. Start lining up now, all 2 copies of this are going to sell FAST.

So it is clear to see that while most people would consider this a squandered 4 months, I see this summer as a nice time to compare subsequent summers to. Because all I would have to do is to go to a cockfight to one-up it.

Signed with bear blood,
Benjamin Nicholls

Today I came across something that, if I were a normal person, I would have immediately thought "wow, that's a really good idea and I commend him for doing that and I want to give him a present." Instead though, I became enraged at the man's lack of foresight or chutzpah.

I'm talking about this guy who took a gps gizmo of some sort and flew around in a plane. The gps thing tracked where he went and drew his path on a map, and lo and behold, it drew his big ol' swedish face on the world.

Now, I realize this is a pretty huge undertaking and this guy probably spent thousands upon thousands of Sweedenios on the project, but I can't help but wonder why the hell he didn't draw something more awesome. He could have drawn anything in the world on the world, so why in the world didn't he draw Megatron? He could have drawn a big meaty fleshdong, all flopping around on whatever country he thought would like that the most (read: Uzbekistan). The world was his canvas, and he squandered it. A monumental waste. If I was smart/artistic/opposite-of-lazy enough to do something like this, I would have drawn a huge mural containing all 7 key features any piece of art needs:

-A robot
-A rocketship
-A talking food item
-A Santa
-A banjo
-A hobo
-Gary Busey



Isn't that way better? I think so too.

PS. Upon actually reading his website, it seems that this whole thing is some sort of magical pretend project for nerd school. This only unfuriates me further. He didn't even DO it. Absolutely nothing was stopping him from drawing a hilarious cheese.

Before I begin yapping about the things I did on the weekend, I want everyone to look at this picture. Look at it long and hard.

Do you notice anything about the man in this picture? If you said "He is much happier than I am, because I am fat and lonely and can't even lift any trucks," then you are right. If you didn't say that, then you are wrong. Allow me to point out why this man is better than everyone.

-He has a fucking cape and a top hat. Dressed for success? Hell yes.
-He is holding a smoking hot russian woman
-He takes up residence in the mansion of hanging beers, where beers frolic all day long awaiting consumption.
-LOOK AT HIS CAPE. GODDAMN.

And why is this man so awesome? It is because he is a swing dancer, which for those of you who suck and aren't classy, means that he puts on some Sinatra, grabs women, and pushes them around. So essentially, it's like what I do all the time, except that you are allowed to do this in public without people calling various shelters and the like.

Why do I mention this? Well, today, at the request of a friend, I went and took my first swing lesson. Naturally, being the classy motherfucker I am, I was instantly a pro. Tony Bennet would have shit his pants if he saw the sexy steps I was pulling off. I would highly suggest that everyone get on down and up the classyness level a whole bunch and attend a class. Who knows, it might just get you a sexy russian chick (or failing that, a tall frosty lager!)

-Ben Nicholls

If the following sentence doesn't make you immediately shit your pants in a fit of insane envy, then you have either already done it or you are a bad person who doesn't like good things.

Tonight, I saw Cloverfield.

I know your initial reaction must be something along the lines of "Wow Ben, you are so great, good choice. Please tell us a funny list of similarly manly experiences!" And of course, I will oblige. Seeing Cloverfield is like:

-Skydiving from a space shuttle onto air force one while it is in midflight.
-Eating one of those hilariously oversized burgers that they sell at those stores where you get your picture put on The Wall of Gluttons
-Murdering a man with a VHS copy of Evil Dead 2
-Winning the gold medal in olympic boxing using nothing but headbutts
-Placing a transmitter between your bicep and elbow so that when you flex your giant muscles, a robot comes and gives you a treasure chest

Seriously, the monster was the most badass thing I've ever seen pretty much. I don't want to spoil anything for you, so I won't saying anything further, other than that a certain something gets high fived by a certain different something AND THE BUILDING FUCKING FALLS DOWN. THE WHOLE BUILDING.

Something...

-Ben Nicholls

A couple of days ago I was on the bus on my way to see Sweeny Todd (by the by, you better go watch that or I will hit you). I was talking to my friend when all of sudden, from the back of the bus, I heard this exchange:

Guy 1: "...you know the guy with the robot voice?"
Guy 2: "Huh?"
Guy 1: "You know, the guy in the wheelchair from the Simpsons."
Guy 2: "Oh, right."
Guy 1: "Yeah, he reminds me of him."

Now, I don't know who Guy 1 thought he reminded him of, but I certainly know that the "guy from the simpsons" is STEPHEN FUCKING HAWKING. Is it wrong of me to have thought that everyone knew who he was? I figured that Stephen Hawking was just the sort of person that everyone knows about, like Gandhi or Jesus or whatever. And yet this incident has revealed to me that there is an entire set of people out there in the world that think he is simply a dude in a wheel chair from the Simpsons. This saddens me.

Seriously though, is Stephen Hawking an obscure thing? Do only physics nerds like me know about him? Let me know, okay? I'm sort of scared now.

-Ben Nicholls

This section will be for me to post raqndom thoughts and the like that I am too lazy to make into anything particularly substantial. Other people would tend to call this a "blog", but I don't really like that word. I'm not even sure why anyone uses it, it doesn't really roll off the tongue at all.

Anywhos, I hope you like the website. It took an entire morning of listening to movies to make. I listened to Pan's Labyrinth; it's not nearly as moving without the subtitles. Luckily I've seen it enough times that even in panish I can still follow along.

Anyways, that's about it. This is really only here to test things anyways, it's not even like a real post or whatever.

Someone draw me an avatar or something to put in the corner there. Spruce up the place a bit it would.

-Ben Nicholls