Month: April 2007

Seeking Analogies Like “Impending Trainwreck”

Maybe it’s just yesterday’s fifteen hour day in a tie and black shoes but the impeding battle of the D-graders against the C-graders is already looking really messy. Not only do we have the embarrassing specter of the “Tory war room” which is just a communications center slash celebration of the Prime Minister’s control freak obsession with ensuring only his words are uttered by every single person waving a blue pin and placard – the UniMindCentre. Now we have this:

The Liberal Party has declared an “electoral urgency” in Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan, ordering workers in the three provinces to nominate candidates as quickly as possible in case there is a spring election.

That’s inspiring. Because you know the best people are attracted “as quickly as possible”. I’d care if it weren’t that both of these parties have established by their own track records that each will race to download services and disassemble the Federal Government in its own way leaving the civil services as no more than one guy called Luc with a call centre and another guy called Vic with a cheque book. Unnation making. The National Undream. Next thing you know we are going to have a plan to the return to “traditional regiments” in the form of Provincial militias representing local values and local standards. Or maybe different provincial central banks with different prime rates and fiscal policies.

Once again I wonder – who the heck am I going to vote for?

Lessons Not Quite Learned

This is quite bizzare:

Argentina has renewed its claim over the Falkland Islands on the 25th anniversary of invading them – and losing a subsequent war with Britain. “The Malvinas are Argentine, they always were, they always will be,” said Argentine Vice-President Daniel Scioli, using the Spanish name for the islands.

Has the world changed that much in 25 years? More than half my life ago there was the cover of the Halifax Herald with, on one side, a line-up of Argentine recruits lined up in civilian clothes and on the other Royal Marines doing drill on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Ships sunk, hundreds dead, war lost. I remember watching a show years ago about the culture of Argentina, about how like Finland it had something of a streak of gloom, sort of an anti-Serbia with an expectation that things will not pan out, that it was somehow cursed despite all the wealth potential. If course this could all be mixed up in my memory, based only on half truths and rumour as usual, but it does make you realize people have to have something to talk about given the prospect of enhanced squidding opportunities.

Alou! Mets! Baseball!

Good to see Moises Alou in the Mets uniform tonight. He has cemented my satisfaction that one should have both a favorite American League team and a National League team. Why? Better chance of having former Expos to root for. Also usually provides you with something to watch when Boston is playing Tampa.

Resources for starting or enhancing your own joint obsession:

That’s a start. Who other than Pedro has been on each of the Expos, Red Sox and Mets? Not Moises. Not Bill Lee. Kirk Bullinger can live that dream if he were only to pull up his socks and get back into the game.

Fact: Julio Franco enters his 30th professional season tonight.

Seeds

I set about picking the seeds for the garden this morning. Seeds and even fruiting bushes and trees are the perfect e-commerce product. Neat, compact and modest in price. One of the nice things about some sites is the ability to spend about 50% more – three bucks instead of two – and get the small commercial producer’s size of any seeds you particularly covet. For me, that is Genovese basil to blend with olive oil for a winter’s worth of green sludge but I am also getting super-sized on the sugar snap peas. I will squeeze the peas into every spare sunny wall and trellis. Between them will be pots of the basil and even a couple of figs amongst them, ordered on-line and shipped bare rooted by courier.

Why? I plan to gorge, of course. Gorging is an under appreciated activity and, frankly, is wasted for the most part on things we later regret – hot dogs, cheezies, booze. There is nothing, however, as puritanically lustful and the gorging on sugar snap peas when they are perfectly ready to be separated from vine and joined with your obsession. Except maybe the anticipation of that moment. There may even be a day or perhaps a week, global warming willing, when there will be figs – more figs than one ought to eat. Chomped right by the plant, sliced and layered with ham, stewed with port and poured hot on vanilla ice cream.