Category: Uncategorized

Friday Bullets For A Week From Christmas

Things get nutty. I finished the 2009 beer blog photo contest last night only to get an email this morning about forgetting to award three prizes. Santa never forgets. We also had the 2009 Kingston St. Lawrence Vintage Base Ball winter meetings last night and basically confirmed there will be a 2010 season. Huzzah! Huzzah!!!

That is it. I wonder if I will post bullet points next Friday, spending time with the computer rather than the children. But it’s like you are all my children… not like the soap opera… more in the stage play sense.

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Friday Bullets For The End Of Not Yule

It is Yule. It is. It is. I am all a giggle. Most of the pressies are stashed already and the tree goes up this weekend. We’re not one of those November tree families, you know. That is freakish. You have to wait for the cold to come and it came yesterday.

  • Amazing show of RCMP red serge and support from over a thousand Mounties at the funeral for the lost police officers in Washington state. h/t to Mr. Taylor via FB.
  • It may be Christmastime but be careful. There are anti-Yule forces. Anti-Santites. Wow. Shocking news. Egg nog has calories. Who knew. Who cares. Is this news?
  • My local NNY TV station of choice knows enough to use the phrase “Gordie Howe hat trick” – excellent.
  • Good news for Jays fans as Jamie Campbell is sent out to pasture. I know he is a human being with feelings and all but… THANK GOD!!!
  • Syracuse wins another. This may be the year I head down and catch a basketball game live. I’ve caught football and lacrosse and now need to complete the holy trinity of orange garbed sports. Nine and Oh.

That is it for now. Not the most bullets but better than last week. Remember the third week of June back in ’07? That was good. Those were great Friday bullets.

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Where Do They Eat The Candied Yams?

Great bit of mapping of information in the New York Times Times morning setting out regional Thanksgiving dinner preferences based on search engine results:

It is hard to draw very many conclusions based on search trends. The fact that cooks in the Southeast rarely look up crust recipes could mean that they are not interested in pies or that they bake so many that no one needs to be told how to do it. And what of all the searches for “cheese ball” in the Midwest? Do people in Indiana just forget how to make it each year, or are cheese balls winning new converts? We may never know why cooks in North Carolina show more interest in sweet potatoes, their most-queried side dish, than people in any other state. Or why a broccoli casserole belt extends through Appalachia and ends in Florida.

I have been interested in how regional and even local US food is for years. New York white hots, Maine Indian pudding, Indiana chicken noodle. All comfort and all about the neighbourhood. We’d never do this in Canada. The other day at work I was mentioning how I was over in upstate and picked up Vermont and Wisconsin cheddars, how different they were. One scoffed response was “well, I’m sticking to Canadian.” Doesn’t matter who produces it, what it tastes like, where it comes from – that person eats “Canadian” apparently.

It’s pretty funny how out national false superiority tells us tales. In a land of homogenized, standardized and nationalized food units, in a nation that researches how to make mild cheese more mild, we strangely assume that we are more diverse and interesting. The generic theory of national character that never fails to disappoint. It’s too bad as there are no doubt many local patterns in history, culture… food. But we’re not interested. There’d never be mapping of Canadian food patterns presented as a positive and interesting. It’d have to tell us again that there is beef in Alberta – never mind PEI’s fantastic “Easter beef” thing when you get to eat the cattle raised for prizes at the previous fall’s Royal Winter Fair or other blue ribbon winners. We are told that fish comes from the sea without consideration of the fried Lake Huron perch shacks or that smoked splake they make there, too. We’d never want to know where the hunter’s mystery pies are to be found.

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Where The Heck Did That Deer Come From?

Nature can be surprising.

The animal will be watched over by veterinarians and then likely given to the Toronto Zoo, police said. Still, no one knows where it came from. “Obviously, it made its way from Rouge Valley, Humber Valley,” said Supt. Hugh Ferguson. “How? God only knows … GO Train, maybe.”

How odd being a few blogs for Deer-Gate, the great question of how the heck a deer got into Toronto. Funny. When I look out the window of the 26th story where I am sitting, I see woods. And on the map nearby I see ravines and woods and I bet that deer is a downtown Toronto deer of long standing.

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Hi-Jinx And Fun Times In Canada’s Parliament

I had a sense that there was the word going out this week to raise little bubbles of discredit of the legislative process when young Tory Stephen Taylor¹ put out the message “did you know that 15 minutes in the House of Commons costs the taxpayer $75,000?” Makes sense. Dad’s out of town. Juniors have to be kept in line. With performances like these, well, he may be right:

“Yesterday the government could not tell us why it erected an expensive sign in Gatineau to advertise the installation of another sign,” Nova Scotia MP Mike Savage said. “In Yellowknife, another Conservative sign has been bought to advertise the installation of ‘interior-exterior signs.’ Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.” Mr. Savage wanted to know why the government is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on signs when more and more Canadians are using food banks. Transport Minister Baird characterized these signs as “signs of hope”, and signs of opportunity.

You get used to this stuff when it continues for long enough. But it grates and it wears. Look to the voice of reason when it can be heard, like that of Canada’s favorite alt-country politician, Chuck Angus, who spoke out against Twitter in committee on Tuesday:

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, but this is not a clown show. We are elected to represent our people. We go to committee to do serious business. I believe the issue of members sitting on committee with their inane Twitters about what happens at committee demeans the work of all parliamentarians. I am not going to speak on this party or that party. We have an obligation to represent the best of our country and I would like members of Parliament to put the inane little games away and get down to business of serving their constituents.

Now that’s public speaking. He was building upon his rebuke of the Liberals on Monday:

Mr. Speaker, I always listen with great interest to my hon. colleague, but I think we need to back up a little to see where the Liberal Party has been. When it came to siding with the Conservatives on stripping pay equity for women, the Liberal Party stood and supported that. When it came to stripping basic environmental protection on Canada’s river ways, the Liberal Party stood with the Conservative Party and supported that. When it came to stripping the fundamental obligations on Kyoto, the Liberal party went along with that. The Liberal Party always looks through the prism, not of a national vision but of how to get back to power. Now we have a situation where the Liberal leader, perhaps he was seeking employment benefits himself, suddenly announced that the Liberals would oppose everything from here on in. The Liberals are opposing changes to EI, which would help unemployed workers. Many in my riding have asked me about supporting it, but the Liberal Party does not support that. The bigger issue is getting the visitor from Harvard elected. Now the Liberals are refusing to support the home renovation tax credit, even though it is out there, because the visitor from Harvard sees this as a path to getting to power. The Liberals have supported the government on everything that is wrong. When it finally has done one or two things right, the Liberals oppose it. I cannot understand their hypocrisy on this.

Now, that’s the voice of someone who is taking the business of the business of the nation seriously. Far clearer and finer a voice than, sadly, we had to put up with from Defense Minister Elmersson MacKay whose idea of oratory is “Mr. Speaker, I think we all know here in the House who is doing the huffing and puffing and hyperventilating and pontificating. It is the member opposite.” Sounds like one of those out guys on the Muppets complaining form the balcony, Statler and Waldorf. Another gem from the man who cursed the language with his personal invention, unCanadian.

¹You know, the…err… blogger who gets to speak “with a senior staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office and another staffer at Public Works” to put together a blog post. As fine a gentleman as ever you will meet. Just hi-jinxy methinks from time to time.

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Big Easlakia Base Ball News Circa 1874

While I was over hobnobbing with the shaken and moved of the southern part of our Easlakian neighbo(u)rhood, I have actual stuff to do. Base ball stuff as I wanted to research the Watertown tournament of 1874 given that there were references to it in the Kingston papers of the time. I had thought that they went to play but in fact it appears that they went to watch as they are not listed as a team in the schedule.

Kingston’s rivals of the day, the Guelph Maple Leaf, win the event held in late June and early July over eight days before pop up here after for a game on 7 July 1874. But there are other notes that make it very curious:

  • There is a first and second class tournaments being played side by side making for a total of 14 teams. I do not know why you would have seven teams per class but there you have it.
  • Being or rather not being “daunted” meant something in the mid-1870s as there is a second class team called “The Undaunted” of La Fargeville, NY and another second class team called “The Dauntless of Watertown, NY. Careful readers will know that there was also a team called Dauntless of Ogdensburg, NY which the Kingston St. Lawrence played on Friday 8 August 1874 in Ogdensburg as well as the Dauntless Club of Toronto that Kingston played in 1872 and 1873 .
  • One team in the first class group was the Ku-Klux of Oneida, NY described as “the acknowledged champion club of Northern and Central New York” in the 29 June issue of the The Daily Times of Watertown. You will be comforted to know that the Maples Leaf of Guelph thumped them 13-4 and that the team was slagged in the paper as “the negro haters” who scored a “usual whitewash,” a “goose egg, ” a “cipher” and “skunked” in various innings.
  • Certain players of the Nassaus of Brooklyn, NY and some Eastons of Easton, Pennsylvania were reported in the 6 July issue as having taken a wagon to Sackets Harbor on Sunday 4 July and returning in quite a state: “It would have been proper if the whole crowd could have been unloaded at the jail.” They apparently were driven through Public Square as they sand “Mulligan Guards” and kindred songs.

Thrilling stuff. Need to do a little cross referencing but it looks like the Eastons of the 1870s may have been a rival to the Philadelphia Athletics which are now the Oakland A’s.

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Friday Bullets For The Fall Membership Drive

Membership drive? Not for around here. That didn’t work out well. No, it’s the week that the incessant drone in my head called NCPR asks for your support… and you should answer the call. I feel badly for not going over to answer phones this week and not just because sometimes there is beer.

Friday is upon us. The best day of the work week. I have meetings but they are good meeting, thanks for asking.

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Friday Bullets For The Feast Of The Big Bird

Not Big Bird just a big bird.

I am having a little difficulty coming to terms with the fact that Jay… Jay who has commented on this blog for yoinks, actual yoinks… did not know I have a logo. Made it myself when I was 41. So this is it. Jay: ‘Hello, Mr. Logo.” Mr. Logo (with a deeper voice): “Hello, Jay”. There. That’s done.

  • The “They Were After My Town” Update: “And the third bomb would go off at a military base somewhere along Highway 401, between Toronto and Ottawa.” Where else is a military base along the 401? Well, Trenton I suppose.
  • “What Country!” Update: unemployment dropping. Said it before – amazing economy we have… mainly by the luck of geography and importing the most ‘fraidy cat of business cultures through 300 plus years of immigration.
  • It started when I was in high school and was called “the yuppie flu” as it sapped the will of baby boomers. Now they figured it out.
  • I had no idea that I could pick up high school radio at work until the other day. Plenty of hits of the 80s. Teacher’s oversight committees are gold.
  • Just in time for Gourmet magazine’s demise, I learn that not reusing the paper coffee filter is a crime against nature. Who knew these things were more J-cloth than Kleenex?
  • Did you know algae only took a few years to rebound after the comet slammed into the Earth? It’s all about stunning and amazing facts this week.
  • Less charming is the fact that we are governed by consultants whose salaries flow from who knows where: “Asked Monday if he ever worked at the hospital network, which includes Toronto General, MacLeod replied, “No.”” Excellent. Note the extra “a” in MacLeod.
  • I don’t know what to make of this. I am not of the “Obama = Satan” school that is out there but I still don’t know where he is heading. Peace prize? For just not being in a telephone pals relationship with Dick Cheney? Maybe.

Friday beckons. A three day weekend beckons. Plans for the weekend? Dump run. Wooooooot!

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Listening To The Doctor Who Radio Hour

Actually an hour and eleven minutes. My newest obsession has moved into a new medium with release of the first CD of Hornet’s Nest entitled “The Stuff of Nightmares“. The BBC has found a way to get Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor, to record audio plays 28 years after his last appearance on the TV show. I read about it in the last DWM, one of the more successful spin-offs itself.

I used to like radio plays quite a bit – especially rebroadcasts of BBC whodunnits. That was until the CBC started trying to make them and sapped my will to go on. Every broadcast out of Toronto seemed to require overdone ray guns or minutes long sweaty orgasms. No one told the CBC apparently that porn has never worked on the radio. With some hope of a better outcome, I bought an earlier Who audio play CD a few months ago about Leela on Gallifrey but it didn’t catch me either. Too much of an in-joke. Needing a web concordance to figure out what was going on.

None of that in this case. Baker’s fourth Doctor leans heavily on Sherlock Holmes and works in a familiar way, a way that works on radio. Baker keep his Who in a certain scope that is quite unlike the recent Messianic versions. He once questioned whether he had the right to kill off the Daleks – something the Ninth and Tenth would not so much as blink at… perhaps with good reason.

Maybe it’s just the tone of voice that works in this one for me. I watched one of the special extras on the Key To Time last night after the kids were all asleep. It was one of a number of episode of Late Night Story with Baker back in 1978 sitting at a desk in a study at night reading a nightmarish tale of a boy about to die. Grim and creepy. “The Stuff of Nightmares” has that, too.

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The Last Friday Bullets Of This Summer

I wore a sweater to work yesterday. I should have stung like it was rinsed in acid but I settled into place. I used to not like summer so much. But that was when it meant summer job labour camps and the days before controlling my own air conditioning unit. Say what you like about the miseries of owning a house, not owning one was not as good. But now it’s the cold that gets to you. I used to aspire to being outdoorsy but I realize now that I am destined to be indoorsy. Climate controlled.

  • So when do we actually get tax and duty free border crossing?
  • “Diplomatic celebrity“? How can that be anything but an oxymoron. Telling that both parties wanted him. It’s a lot like living in a disfunctional one party state.
  • Do they have body bags in storage for you, too?
  • Like others, I have watched Leno. I have enjoyed watching Leno. The comedy is 75% on which is better than usual and the musical guests are OK, though last night’s Clapton and Hornsby combo was a bit weird, many due to the free form jazz selection.
  • Morton still awful.
  • Three-billion-to-one? Add in the fact that a 34 year old can golf three times in a week on weekdays when not on an annual holiday and make it more like an ad for Canada’s regional development subsidization policies.
  • So Brian has been the only Tory majority leader in 50 years. And he left the party with 2 seats and two decades in the wilderness.
  • Think I will write a book on the 4375 beers to drink before you die. Inflation is affecting beer books. Time was 50 was enough. Or maybe 300 was the required number.

The gaping maw of the weekend stands before us. Have I mowed may last mow already? Will I find a way to get off the sofa?

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