Category: Uncategorized

The Very First Friday Bullets For The New Year

This surely is the unnamed holiday. The shadow twin of Boxing Day, the orphaned Friday stuck between that holiday with a hangover and a weekend. I will suit up and make my way to work but will there be work to meet me there? There likely will be an emptiness, desks without jockeys, voice mail alerts flashing at no one until Monday’s return to the new term, the start of the second season.

  • Actual Doctor Who News Update: the next Doctor will be announced tomorrow. Will he be a she?
  • Update: Skull Splitter saved. More here.
  • New Year’s Day was as idle as idle could be. Ever notice how idle and ideal are so closely related? Hmm? Have you? I didn’t even watch a bowl game, which surprises me a bit. But I did roast a prime rib roast better than I have ever roasted one before. Thanks heavens for the pre-Christmas beef price collapse at the A+P.
  • Congratulations to the twins.
  • The New Years blizzard in PEI received the attention of bloggers with video cams.
  • Ben is quite content with both 2008 and the prospects for 2009. I suppose I have to agree: the family expands, kids are arguably above average, the holiday tours indicated a fairly contented clan. Some will complain but they, we must recall, were asked not to stay on.
  • What is to come? I expect again I will not be wise with my taxes even if I will spend hours getting better at Wii. I expect Iggy to coat tail what is happening to the south and benefit from the increase in confidence that will exist at the end of the year with or without yet another Federal election. I grew out my beard. Will it last? Such suspense.
  • The corner has been turned in the baseball year with the season to come now the topic rather than the one that has just passed. I like the idea of Derek Lowe playing for the Mets but I have no idea where Manny is going to land.
  • Predictions? Resolutions? What could they be? Pledging to be smarter and healthier? Promising to myself that I will eat wild game and buy cut flowers once a week? Ensuring I have an ear to the new bands despite all of new music being chronologically dislocated for me for almost a decade? Play more penny whistle. That’s it!

It is quiet in the house as it should be. The road outside is silent as I trust I will find the office. The day without a name.

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Gen X At 40 Year In Review 2008 – Part One

What a great looking headline for a blog post. I have no idea why I never thought of this before. I have a need to coast between Christmas and New Year’s Day like everyone else so this is perfect. All I have to do is think of something I have already thought. of. The weird things is I have done this sort of post over at the beer blog every year. Look. This is what I wrote about 2006. Over here? Nothing. Maybe its because I really don’t write stuff and even really observe over here. I really just rip off others. Sure there was all that good stuff about the 157 phoney Saddams back in the day but that was when blogging was cool. Now it’s just an addiction verging on some sort of social pathology that is, for some unknown reason, destroying the journalism industry that it coincidentally clings to like a parasitic…sorry, there was no need to use a simile there. But this is a winner. I am sure of it. The best of 2008. Can’t wait. Plenty to think about. I am certain. This is the road to returning to the hay days, the halcyon year of cheques from the CBC, of requests to join discussion panels. This is it. Excellent.

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Christmas Countdown: An Evening With Dr. Who

I think I am a softie. I have taken to handing out twoonies for the slightest sign of good behaviour and calm in these hours before the binge. I am even talking to them by name rather than the usual “now!” But I don’t know whether it is a good think that I picked up a few episodes of Dr. Who from 1975. The Genesis of the Daleks. Far more piles of bodies than I recall from my innocent years, even if machine guns did not apparently create bullet holes or any show of blood. The plan was to have a pre-Christmas showing over a few days to play the role of the panic button when things were getting out of hand. Instead we watched the whole thing – or at least the males did. Toggle switches were very cool in 1975 and evil, too, when they are about three inches long and made of translucent red plastic. Many eerie moments with hands hovering over toggle switches or, worse, flicking them. Too much in the end for anyone but me in the house.

Did you know that mad scientists when they create machines of mass murderous mayhem also include a feature of a red button that has the words “Total Destruction” neatly wrapped around it just in case people do not get the point? I imagine the 157 identical Saddams knew of such things even if it didn’t make it to the act.

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A Very Special Friday Bullets For Christmas

Why so special? Because I took the day off, of course. We have stuff to get in, stuff to put up and stuff to eat. We have a snow storm coming a guests tonight. Ball cap wearing guests, fortunately. But there is that eternal question – how much booze to buy in anticipation of a party that may be one-third of the expected if the snow storm hits hard? Last weekend I kad the kids note down all the species we may consume in one form or another as part of Yule and it was quite impressive: scallops, lobster, crab, oysters, haddock, cod, salmon, chicken, duck, turkey, beef, lamb, pork, buffalo. Surely there are more. T’is the season to eat nature.

  • Mr Orange Togue heads to Afghanistan. I showed Darcey’s pal MOT a good time around Ottawa a year and a half ago. Our thoughts are with MOT and his companions. Christmassy. Definitely Christmassy.
  • Evil web hacker jerks help destroy nature. Not Christmassy at all.
  • The New York Times has vital cookie batter information for you just when you need it. Massively Christmassy.
  • Can the definition of individual liberty posed here actually stand? Seems like wishery to me. Christmassiness neutral.
  • Please tell him to be quiet. Interesting to see how many of the At Issue panel considered Stephen Harper overrated. Very Christmassy or not at all depending on your position. I saw Iggy on The Hour last night. He can actually string two sentences together, something foreign to Canadian politics. Harper is toast. But thanks for the extra seats at this special time of year.
  • Ben pointed out the 1793 legislation (within maybe a year of Ontario’s creation) barring slavery’s expansion. Anti-slavery is very Christmas.

There you go. Off to buy cleaning products and liquor. Happy happy everyone and if your happy is a holiday, whoops up and woots a plenty for that, too.

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How To Govern Canada When You Have No Ideas

Has anyone else noticed that the days-long coalition of the opposition (COTO) has somehow become a source of conservative party economic theory? The mere existence COTO, which seems to have had a life span of six days, has caused Ontario to gain of 20% in its seats in Parliament (thus alienating the west even more), has caused Finance Minister Flaherty to go from “we’ll look at this again in March” to “would you like more money with that?”, has caused the Prime Minister to (again) blurt about this all moving to depression and even how he’ll never write a memoir…like we are waiting for one like we are waiting for that “hockey book” of his, which was all the news when we thought he was all burly-man rat-jacketed, pick-up truck and maply syrup in his veins.

Sure these are wacky times but do you have any idea what the policies of the Government of Canada will be, you know, next week? Is there any way to suggest that they are not simply a poorer version, a chippier example of the Liberal Party of Paul Martin, flopping around for any straw to grasp that can fit the day’s needs even to the point of asking us to use this 1998 web survey (h/t David) to tell him what to do? Maybe it’s the times. Maybe anyone would be having to do this given the economic news and the political reality. But one word keeps popping up that is absent from the Reform Party master plan for social engineering that has been gathering dust on the shelf for some time now: weak. Is anyone not surprised that this one characteristic – indecisive rudderless weakness – you would never have applied to the man now seems be at the heart of Stephen Harper’s political nature? I wish better for him…because if he can’t pull it together we are not going to be doing too well.

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Why Does Technology Do These Things To Me?

Why, when I am up way too early, is one TV getting the regular cable transmission of CBS affiliate WWNY of nearby Watertown NY on channel seven while the one with the digital box is showing ABC 22, a station serving Vermont, Plattsburg NY and Montreal? Don’t tell me I need to get used to upper Champlain Valley local news now, too. This is an extension of another phenomena. If the digital box TV and the non-digital box TVs are set to the same channel, there is a three second lag between the digital one and the non-digital one. What are the electrons doing during that lag?

The upside? I learned from ABC 22’s broadcast at 5:51 am that – according to the apparently not uncontroversial Pastor Arnold Murray Shepherd’s Chapel, speaking from his nondenominational church in Gravette, Arkansas – the answer to all of life’s questions appears to be “you got to read your Bible, son” if his question and answer session, apparently to Vermonters and others of the upper Champlain valley, were anything to go by. Maybe that’s more aimed at Montreal. Give me the late Perry F. Rockwood any day.

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Group Project: Remember Ruling From The Centre?

Ja ‘member? That was good.

Apparently that thing called “the West” that stretches from the BC’s eastern border to the far western reaches of Saskatchwan is up in arms about the rest of Canada getting in bed with the separatists. They are so mad they are planning to separate. Jay seems to be going that way and Darcey is well past that point and even uses some sweary Mary language to describe his feelings. So a few questions:

  • Will you feel better or worse if PM Harper manages to hold on to power?
  • Would the Tories have a better chance of maintaining power if Harper quits and they reverse policies to return to the center?
  • What the heck is the coalition actually going to do? Do you want them to rule from the center?
  • Why isn’t the Bloc legitimate? I mean I support Scottish separatism or a degree of useful autonomy if the people want it.
  • And isn’t “the West” threatening to separate as a group of Albertans suggest because the Liberals have made a pact with the Quebec separatists just a teensie-weensie bit odd? Who stands for the nation?

For me, it started with Mulroney and the cutting of national programs like the train and the post office. Maybe even further back and the changes to the military’s uniforms and structure. It continued for another two decades with more and more removing and cutting and denigration of the land as a whole in favour of local interests and a do nothing attitude. The Government of Canada is for disassembling. It’s not so much as these programs and institutions were sacred but they were not replaced by anything that made the federation stronger.

Recently, I had the honour to go to a US village council on official business and witnessed the pledge of allegiance being recited before the meeting began. It was a casual, competent and fully aware moment of commonality by everyone of all persuasions in the room that could have been played out anywhere in the nation. Not jingoism. They just love their country. We have nothing like that. Maybe we did once.

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Make Sure You Chew Your Food Thirty Times, Too

In what can only be seen as a decision not to decide, our nation’s Prime Minister has proudly proclaimed that he will think about the impending recession after the whole deep dark Canadian winter has passed:

Canadians will have to wait until the next federal budget before Ottawa delivers what Prime Minister Stephen Harper said could be an “unprecedented” fiscal stimulus package – a delay economists say the country can ill afford. A spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office said yesterday the government is still trying to determine what would be appropriate and is looking at 2009 budget measures rather than action outside of that.

Whoa, there big fella! Don’t get any whiplash or anything. Make sure you get a good season in before you react to fast moving events. I suppose it is funny because the infrastructure work that would likely be at the heart of a recovery plan is screaming to be done. Highway bridges in Quebec need renewal as do municipal sewer systems as do rural broadband as do water systems on remote First Nations. We have been sitting on our hands for a few decades and, now that we are facing the need to get work going, there is actually work needing done. And be honest – market intervention is not “yikes socialism!!!” when the government just plays the role of goods and services buyer. Puts money in the pockets of people who know how to use a shovel, always a good thing for the economy.

So, unless dong nothing turns out to be the wisest form of intervention – right after dairy production goes lunar – how will Mr. Harper look after Obama goes BAM! and gets the next generation of needed US infrastructure projects moving? Is this an Iggy-tastic moment?

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