Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
Jay poached the photo so I don’t have to. Aside from his sad lapse into phoney baloney snide conclusion, it really points out a very interesting fact – Canadians like the Stanley Cup more than canoes, more than a Tim Hortons outlet located in a Canadian Tire – more than even the NHL who only hold it in trust, more than hockey or the flag.
Update: Not only does he acknowledge the Cup as a national icon, he also confirms that honesty is a great trait of a great man. Good for General Hillier.
Now that I know I am a hour or so away from the best ribs I have ever had, I am ever so much more sensitive to issues relating to crossing the border. Sad the news, then, comes that Canada and the US have arrived at an impasse as it relates to the rights of humans at the gates. There is the opinion of The Buffalo News:
The United States wanted to take fingerprints from some travelers who acted a little suspicious, specifically those who approached the border but, for whatever reason, decided not to cross. But Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms — which apparently does not treat changing one’s mind as evidence of terrorist intent — is held to forbid taking fingerprints from any person not charged with a crime.
Such presumption of innocence is apparently another thing that the U.S. administration considers “quaint.” And that’s really too bad, not only for those who respect the rule of law but also for those who make a living going back and forth across what used to be called the world’s longest unmilitarized border.
Nice to see that we are thought the Trus North Strong and Free to someone else but it begs the question – what if I want to give up some identification to get more security. I cross on average once every six weeks. Last week the NEXUS program expanded to all border waterways. NEXUS is a handy-dandy little card that both governments recognize and costs a little less than a full passport. But it is not fully rolled out and does not apply yet to land crossings in my part of the St. Lawrence Valley. Those Weslakians are keeping it all to themselves. Dastards.
How to get one party rule? Don’t fight the power! Share a big hug over a nothing issue. Make it all bland and, like, righteous so that everyone wants the same thing because its all about what is right and it is never right to say bad things…especially when it’s based on made-up stuff.
In Russia, Mr. Doan again denied making a cultural slur Tuesday, saying he takes pride in being a role model and would never have made the comments attributed to him. He previously launched a lawsuit against Denis Coderre, a Liberal MP who criticized him. Coderre has counter-sued.
Sue them all, Doan. Sue them for being stuffed, bloated pompoustatrons.
Comments in the morning. I just had this flashback to four years ago and my newbie blogging reactions over how nice I thought it was getting up in the morning to a bunch of stuff to read. Even though the stats are still sort of collapsing (everyone seemingly migrating to the beer blog ever so slowly), the comments are far more important at Gen X at 40 as I now and for some time have had no real expectations for this organ of mine other than being a place of pleasant if vigorous and unexpected.
You see things have changed. Last month I got about 105,000 visits from 57,207 unique visitors. While that latter number is the highest ever, I think the visits peaked in August 2005 at 338,790 but I only had 30516 uniques in that month. So I think we can see that I have gone from a 1/11 to less than 1/2. I used to kid myself that you were coming back 11 times a day. Can you say “spam filters”? It is indicative of it all, of course. Where once we thought these blogs were going to be newspapers, we are just pen pals. And that is more than good enough.
I have to give particular thanks for one particular reader this morning. Chris Taylor was good enough to share baseball tickets he could not use. I had it in my head they were for Toronto and Detroit and they enter the weekend’s mid-table letter pile. And, as it is for a Thursday, I think 5 hours driving for a 3 hour event will be a pass and I ask if I can pass them on again to someone who is going to use them and the ever kind Chris says sure. So I give the tickets away, come home to find them, end up having to dig through the recycling box to find the envelope and there it is – and it is not for the Jays against the Tigers…it’s for the Thursday night game next week against the Sox! I am so there. Six rows back of the visitor’s dugout screaming my love for Manny. I think I will go early to get some photos. My daugther is already planning the poster referencing Gerry Remy and portland.
What is the superlative of “woot”? “Most wooty”?
So I give the tickets away, come hope to find them, end up having have to dig through the recycling to find the envelope and there it is – and it is not for the Jays against the Tigers…it’s for the Thursday night game next week against the Sox. I am so there.
Good reason to break out the good stuff. And not just because the last “Week of…” post never got finished with the review of this particular example of the good stuff. One reader wrote about how those long posts were messing up his RSS reader because I wrote them over time. Well, I get the point. “The Week of Eleven…” anythings is too much so we will evolve that little theme next time. See. I can both create and evolve.
On with the beer. This one pours a clear orange butterscotch with an orange cream head that resolves to a thin rim. Booze and orange marmalade on the nose, there is plenty more of each in the mouth. But there is other stuff. Lemon curd creaminess and decent graininess for a big beer with a relatively dry setting. Not overly hot from either the alcohol or the hopping – amazing considering the 120 IBU and whopping 20% booze. This one 12 oz bottle equals five standard Canadian light beers. The hops are both herbal minty green and somewhat tea astringent. Oloroso sherry. 92% of BAers get it.
Oops – it is heating up now.
The BBC’s technology page runs (over there at the middle right) short quotes grabbed from blogs as part, one supposes, of an effort to be hip through enhanced vacuity. While I am sure the entire sum of this person’s work and thoughts deserves far better, the Beeb’s choice of quote this morning hil-air:
I was honestly woken up last week by the fear that I would stop blogging because Twitter is so much more compelling.
Somewhere over the weekend I heard of the new generation gap – between those with online habits and those without. But it is worse. It’s between those with a concern for content and those without. Twitter seems to be MetaFilter for people with even shorter attention spans. Fabulous. As MySpace devolves to Facebook and Facebook to Twitter, there ought to be a VC rush to back services that strip even more and more away. Maybe I ought to create a site with only punctuation marks available for discussion. Here’s a suggestion: “?”, “!”, “;-)”. Boffo.
I love how an object appearing to be “bhammersley” just typed “omg” like a fourteen year old Valley Girl…though I think it is spelled “omG!”
I have not put my mind to the question of whether the passing of my cat is related to the pet food poisoning matter. The one ate from the same dish and the late Frobie had symptoms for years. Yet, now learning more as we are about what has been going on, it would not be hard to wonder:
As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.
“…a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests…” “…not believed to be particularly toxic…” Just another reason to say thank you China.
Nothing is more important to any politician – left, right or centre – intent on a little social engineering than creating new myths that bear little resemblance to actual history but which prop up the political needs of the day but this is either funny or unsettling:
“Real nationalists don’t want destroy, they want to build,” said Mr. Harper, who even at one point quoted Quebec’s nationalist conservative premier of the 1940s and 1950s, Maurice Duplessis. “The real nationalists aren’t afraid of reality, they want to improve it, and that’s what our government is doing”… Mr. Harper finally found a sympathetic ear Saturday night. “There is nothing more precious than the family farm, which represents so well all the values on which our country has been built,” he said to rapturous applause.
Is it just me or wasn’t Duplessis sort of, you know, a quasi-fascist thug whose name has been mud since he got the boot. And wasn’t this nation built on military garrisons, state chartered resource-stripping monopolies and colonial policies that lasted well past the days of being a colony? I suppose you have to tell the people what they want to here but there has to be a limit, one would think, well before the point of the giggles.
Next thing you are going to hear is about how the Erie Canal and wagon trains opened up the route to Alberta.
Even getting money back…one day…if I have calculated right…doing the tax forms sucks the life out of you.
Wasn’t it just last Friday? Time is flying. I am making arrangements for an undergrad reunion so I suppose I am a bit sensitive to these things. Yes, 25 years ago I was a seedy weedy sullen yute at the University of Kings College and soon people will be returning there from across the globe. From Engerlant to the Yukon so far. Of course I dread it. But if you qualify as a mid-late 80s grad, you should go. Two words: video dance.
…what I like best about being a reactionary is that I do not have to make sense.
What is it about men passing their best before date? You consider an agreement with a toothless non-profit the same as an agreement with a nation state. You consider low level assault either by boot to the arse or smothering hug to be your right. You consider traveling 1600 km to sit in a dorm room only to realize you are equidistant to the old wrinkly stage again the right thing to do.
Pity men as they move into their golden years. We can’t help it.