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Mr Harper you're the worst Prime Minister in my life time. Hang on a second... Oh, sorry, I forgot about Mulroney.

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And McGuinty you're looking a little obsequious don't you think. Who do you think you are Ed Stelmach® ?

Please recommend this post

Grammar Fussing

I'm obsessing again over grammar, spelling and general style. Hardly a day goes by when I don't spit some coffee at my monitor while reading something poorly formed. And it's not just bloggers, the MSM can quite easily use their thick style manuals as door stops as well. Listening to the Radio can be a hoot as well, especially at night when they put the B teams on.

Before I go any farther I should admit that I'm just as bad, given half a chance.

So here are my latest requests of things that you cease and desist in:

1. Use of the phrase in point of fact. This is meaningless chin dribbling gibberish. Stop it.

2. Use of then instead of than. Amy has bigger hair then Jenna.

3. Use of going forward. The other night the Edmonton Oilers won a hockey game in regulation for the first time in ages. After the game a reporter asked a player in a locker room scrum: ...how important is it to continue this kind of play going forward..." What a stupid question to begin with. What are you supposed to answer, well going forward we kind of want to lose a lot... Going forward, presumably in time, is sort of a basic assumption of reality that need not be constantly re-affirmed.

4. People who say or write ANN Rand instead of Ayn Rand. You're a pretty incompetent libertarian if you don't know her name. There probably is an Ann Rand somewhere. Pity her. Think of the hate mail.

5. Never start off an explanation with I personally believe. If you are using this phrase you are in semi-lucid companionship with Miss Teen USA South Carolina. You will need a good map to find your way out of that quagmire. Unless you use this phrase we will have to assume that you don't believe what you are saying.

6. Stop using any word that ends in ess, trix or ette. Poetess, Authoress, Seductress, Dominatrix. One of the charming things about French is that the gender of a noun has no connection whatsoever with its meaning. You should always keep people guessing when it comes to gender. Words that have fancy-smancy gender endings, especially of the feminizing kind, are hereby declared poor style.

7. Overuse of LOL. If you LOL me one more time I'm going to come over there and KYA. Besides, I know you're just being polite. I'm not all that funny.What would it take to have a kind of an internet counter-insurgency to get rid of the use of LOL? Who's with me?

8. Use of through instead of done. Through is mostly a preposition and is abused this way. Correct usage: I tried to walk through the glass wall at Second Cup instead of using the door. Therefore I'm done with them. I'm through with you should be I'm done with you. Writers make it worse by writing the homophonic[2]version: I'm threw with you, or the non-existant I'm thru with you, Or the IM version, Im thr w u which makes you look illiterate. By the way, its a mean thing to say to someone who probably loved you a lot.

9. Avoid use of the words literal or literally. As Ambrose Bierce[1] observed, they are

Often incorrectly used in support of exaggeration or violent metaphor."

Metaphors should never be violent. Not even uppity. Avoid phrases like Stephen Harper literally kicked the chair across the room. Even if it is true.

10. Irrelevant adjectives are distracting. According to the NHL web site,

Twenty years ago Ron Hextall became the first NHL goalie to physically score a goal."

The reader is tempted to believe that prior to this accomplishment all NHL goalies scored goals metaphysically or in some ethereal non-physical way.

I have more but I think I'll stop now in the interest of public safety.

[1] Ambrose Pierce appears courtesy of the A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults freely available at the Gutenburg Project. [2]A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different meaning. People who use homophones are called homophonics, and are part of an agressive militant agenda.


Update: Reposted 11-Jan-2008 09:00 am MST. Original time stamp was incorrect.
Update: Fixed typo: it's not its. How embarassing. Please recommend this post

Kent Austin Leaving?

I was looking at my server logs the other day and trying to figure out why there was a moderate jump in traffic. The bump consisted of people from Mississippi and Arkansas googling "Kent Austin". I figured something was up, even though there was nothing in the news here.

It turns out that the Roughriders gave permission for Austin to interview for a coaching job with the University of Mississippi which is his alma mater. The gap in the coverage between Canada and Mississippi is kind of interesting. Obviously the media down there got the story whereas we did not. I always think it is better for organizations to be proactive about potentially bad news rather than letting the media write the story for you.

If Austin does leave it will probably be awkward timing because I think most of the CFL coaching vacancies have been filled. The annual CFL Chinese fire drill is all but over.

So who would they get as a replacement? Ned Flanders Tom Higgins is the only one I can think who is available, at least as someone with senior CFL coaching experience. Having Higgins coaching the Roughriders would probably generate some profanity ridden commentary in both Calgary and Regina. It would be entertaining. These two fan bases do not like each other.

The other question is how much do you attribute the Grey Cup win to the Coaching skills of Austin? I think he is a fantastic coach and I don't think they would have won it without him. It seems strange to me that he would choose to leave after one year. Maybe there is more to the story that we know right now.

So Riders fans, if Austin leaves will it be another decade or two before you have a parade?

Aside: I previously posted a joke about Austin walking on water. I thought it was funny. But you know what they say about people who laugh at their own jokes. Please recommend this post

Pope Big Oilers Fan

ring...ring...ring...click...This is big Pope B. I'm not at the Vatican right now because I'm out at the Drake. Just finished watching the Oilers lose. If this is a Cardinal or a Bishop come on out. If this is a member of the one true faith come on out. If this is Matty, Barby, Willy, Judy, Jenny or Sven, I know you're not Catholics, but come on out. If this is Mel Gibson, come on out but you have to shut up. If this is Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or Philip Pullman come on out but you guys have to wear skirts. Please recommend this post

A Vortex of Hypocrisy and Shame

I was really saddened this week when I read about the death of 16 year old Aqsa Parvez, allegedly murdered by her father. I was having a bad week to begin with and events like this don't help any of us. To me it is purely a case of domestic abuse and not an issue of immigration, race or religion. Nonetheless, the blogospere swarmed on the story, and honestly I found a lot of the commentary quite disgusting.

Unfortunately this tragedy is being used as a wedge in the ongoing Islamophobia that our society has steadily descended into since September 11, 2001.

I grew up with a friend whom I'll call B. When we were children our fathers were good friends so we saw each other a lot. I don't know how our fathers met. B's father was a WWII Pow in Hong Kong and had life long health problems because of the starvation and torture he endured. After my father passed away I didn't see B nearly as much. B and myself and our families were remarkably alike. Born in the 60's, white protestants, United Church, Boy Scouts of Canda, parents who moved into the new suburbs of Edmonton to raise their new families, etc.

B's mom and my mom occasionally talked and I'd often hear about what he was up to. After high school he had a deep Christian experience and became active in a large Pentecostal church. Neither he nor his family were particularly religious as far as I can remember. Eventually he became a leader in the Church, married and started a family. As some point I lost track of him as he moved to BC.

Sometime in 2006 B was arrested and charged in suspicion of the murder of his 16 year old daughter. I couldn't have been more shocked and saddened by this news. Talk about the last thing you would expect to find out about someone you knew.

The murder did not make the national news. It made the news in the locality where it occurred and made the news in Edmonton, but only because they were from there. The story quickly fell off the media radar and is difficult to find references on the internet at all. I still don't know if B has been convicted and sentenced yet. Last bit of information was the judge sending him off for a Psych evaluation.

When this crime occurred there was not widespread swarming in the blogosphere. No one made broad sweeping hate filled comments about Pentecostals. No one demanded that B go back where he came from. No one blamed it on the fact that B refused to assimilate into our way of life. (An Orwellian term if there ever was one. ) No one cried moral outrage because Pentecostal leaders did not hold press conferences to denounce the crime.

I'm afraid I find this contrast slightly jarring and not particularly flattering to our attitudes. I grieve for an old friend and his family. And I grieve for another family that I do not know who in addition to all else, has to deal with media glare and tightly focused racism. Please recommend this post

Cockroaches Need to Pick It Up a Bit

I enjoy reading science articles, especially about insects. It seems that there were a lot of cockroach stories this week. Basically, if you're keeping score the cockroaches got their asses kicked. They're scoring low on the intelligent design check list.

1. Israeli scientists studied the predatory relationship between a certain species of wasp and a certain species of cockroach. Read this and be sure to watch the video, it's pure Tarantino. The wasp attacks the roach and when it gains control it injects a venom in the roach's brain which eliminates what little intelligence and free will the roach might have had, and leaves only the ability to drool and be led around. (Insert joke about niece's boyfriend.) The wasp then grabs the roach by its antennae and walks it like a dog on a leash back to waspville, where it's led compliantly down into the nest, aka God's waiting room. The roach becomes a living buffet for wasp larvae while everyone hums Piece of My Heart by Janis Joplin.

Wasps are predatory and they totally play dirty. I've read a number of articles about some of their tactics and they're just sick minded little goons. The scientists wanted to know how the wasps did this to the roach's brain. They reversed engineered the venom and figured out how it worked. It was a fine tuned chemical that blocked some signals to the brain but not others. To prove their theory they created an antidote which was able to restore the roach to full functionality. It was able to resume a fully productive live. Cockroach 911 rescue with William Shatner can't be far off. Since they have an antidote they now have a moral obligation to rescue the roaches.

2. Japanese scientists did basically the same thing to the Cockroach, except with a solid state backpack:

TOKYO - A big brown cockroach crawls across the table in the laboratory of Japan's most prestigious university. The researcher eyes it nervously, but he doesn't go for the bug spray. He grabs the remote. This is no ordinary under-the-refrigerator type bug. This roach has been surgically implanted with a micro-robotic backpack that allows researchers to control its movements. This is Robo-roach. "Insects can do many things that people can't, " said Assistant Professor Isao Shimoyama, head of the bio-robot research team at Tokyo University. "The potential applications of this work for mankind could be immense." Within a few years, Shimoyama says, electronically controlled insects carrying mini-cameras or other sensory devices could be used for a variety of sensitive missions - like crawling through earthquake rubble to search for victims, or slipping under doors on espionage surveillance.

Far-fetched as that might seem, the Japanese government has deemed the research credible enough to award $5 million to Shimoyama's micro-robotics team and biologists at Tsukuba University, a leading science center in central Japan. Money from the five-year grant started coming in this month, and young researchers are lining up for a slot on Shimoyama's team. (link)

Anytime a scientist talks about a great benifit to mankind run and hide. The Japanese scientists talk like they've forgotten the important lessons learned from their scrapes with Gojira and Mosura.

As if we don't have enough to worry about on this planet. I've seen enough Ridley Scott movies to know this has the potential to completely ruin our already doubtful future.

3. And then there's the Belgians. They studied the sociology of the Cockroach and built a robot cockroach that was able to emulate behaviours that made the real cockroachs accept them as part of the tribe. Kind of a big tent red tory blue tory thing going on there. No word on whether the scientists were German Belgians or French Belgians.

Researchers in Belgium infiltrated cockroach colonies with robots in order to study their group behavior. The robots didn’t look much like cockroaches, but the roaches didn’t mind as long as they smelled right. Not only were the robots accepted as fellow cockroaches, but they became leaders and influenced the groups’ behavior!

Once again you see the zombie like capitulation. Hey, lets put that guy in charge, the one that looks like a lego toy.

Neatoram.com is becoming one of my favourite sites.

All this leads to the usual speculations about evolution. The Cockroaches are going to have to pick it up a bit and evolve some defense mechanisms. They should be avoiding the wasps somehow, not to mention the Belgians and the Japanese. If scientists can develop an antidote to the wasp's stupidity shot then maybe the cockroach will evolve this. Since evolution is incurably slow this could take some time. There is evidence that some species grow bigger and stronger over time. A million years from now there could be some awfully big cockroaches running around. They will have some irrational hatred of wasps, Belgians and Japanese imprinted in their DNA. Humans will probably get smaller because we no longer have the need to fight or flee. H.G. Wells probably had it right in the last chapter of The Time Machine, except instead of really big crustaceans, they'll be really big cockroaches. And they'll be dumb and mad.

I hope I've scared some children. Please recommend this post

Twelve Songs

Twelve Songs Plus

1. Tori Amos - Fat Slut. Seriously. First tune up. Didn't catch the lyrics but they seemed a little direct. First time listening to Tori. Will she kill me? Time will tell. I would like to be listening to the radio when the 12 year old phones the request line. Your on Power 601 go ahead to you have a request? Yeah, um I'd like to request Tori Amos Fat Slut and I'd like to send it out to my friend Michelle...

2. The Byrds - Goin Back.

3. Serena Ryder - Good Morning Sunshine. This song gets covered a lot on those Idol shows where they are trying to manufacture a new celebrity. So I promised I was never going to listen to it again having fond memories of seeing Hair. The song has been redeemed.

gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby noopy
la la la - lo lo

Its pure brain candy. Plus she's hot. And talented. Hot and talented. There sure are a lot of people doing 60's covers these days. Quite a few of them are hot. I know I'm being sophomoric.

4. Shirley Eikhard - Let Me Down Easy. And after you let me down pick me up and put me back in my wheelchair. I've been let down easy before. If you visit her website she has a long list of people who have covered her songs. It is pretty amazing.

5. Lucinda Williams - Mama You Sweet. What's the song really about. No, really.

6. The Monkees - A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You. The Monkees kept me sane during grade 6 and part of Grade 7. Remember: Monkees not Monkeys.

7. The Beatles - Bungalow Bill. Best line: In case of accidents he always took his mom

8. Wailin Jennies - Long Time Traveller. My niece thinks she's 6 feet tall. She's so delusional. She's like 5'2. I don't why I thought of that. Why here why now?

9. Karan Casey - When Will We All Be Free.

10. Zombies - Season of The Witch.

11. John Michael Talbot - My Vows to the Lord. So we went from Fat Slut to John Michael Talbot. Is anyone shocked. I listen to JMT late at night. It is music that is intended to augment meditation and reflection. So is Fat Slut, but only if someone dedicates it to you on live air.

12. Stephen Fearing - The Man Who Married Music. Love his song-writing.

13. James McMurtry - Red Dress. Not unlike Fat Slut in some ways. My favourite song of his (and I've heard them all) is Choctaw Bingo

Please recommend this post

Listening to?

I'm listening to some classical guitar courtesy of Liona Boyd's The Spanish Album and Sharon Isbin Plays Baroque. The way she plays, she'll never be broke.

On the inside cover of Boyd's album is this picture of her with her cat Muffin. That Cat's eyes are creeping me out.




Hey, didn't she used to date Trudeau? There are any number of ways a paragraph can go sideways when you're talking about Liona Boyd, Muffin, and Pierre Trudeau. I'll leave the punch line up to you. I just like her playing a lot. I'm pretty sure Trudeau would not have liked that cat.

I know less about Sharon Isbin, although she has four or five CDs recorded. She may or may not own a cat, and has never denied not dating a Canadian Prime Minister.

The Vestibules CD Get Spiffy is also in the mix. They provide a welcome break from the byzantine guitarists. My favourite track is Jesus Goes to Hawaii. It is refreshingly irreverent. Or, irreverently refreshing.

The Vestibules is a comedy trio of Terence Bowman, Bernard Deniger and Paul Paré. None of them have dated a Canadian Prime Minister, although to be fair I have not read Mulroney's latest chest thump. Please recommend this post

Cat Food For The Brain

I went over to Sa?e?ay at Market Mall. It was really busy because in the new economy stores cannot find people to fill positions. Or, they screwed up on their scheduling. Take your pick.

They had two clerks on and about 20 people in each line up. I was in the under 15 items line. I've always wondered why they have that. Its not really that much faster when they're busy. Do the cashiers ever count people's items and what if anything do they do if you are over? Why don't they have a minimum item count in the other lines? How did they arrive at the number 15. Where there a bunch of MBA's in a boardroom all day debating this very important number and repeatedly texting Iris to get them more donuts. More Donuts!

If I buy a bunch of Bananas is that one item, or 5. If have a friend along to shop with me can we go up to 30 items? What if I order cigarettes and make the cashier walk all the way to the other end of the store. Why don't they have a line up for people who don't require high maintenance.

Is it less than 15 or less than or equal to 15. If the latter, the signage is incorrect, and in which case it is actually 14 items.

This lady was in the line up in front of me. She was way over 15 items, and had designer frames that you can only get in Mount Royal. She had 50 or more items I guessed. And I had plenty of time to think about it. She was flipping insouciantly through People magazine reading about Britney Spears' mothering skills, which is only available in the under 15 line. The joke here was that it was a short read. Oh, never mind.

She was somewhat pretty (sort of a cross between Amy Winehouse and Vanessa Redgrave) so the men in the line-up just made googly eyes at her. Except for me; I glared at her with the glare-over-15-items-glare-of-death. The cashier waited until she had unloaded all her crap then said condescendingly, do you think you have less than 15 items there deary. You could have heard a pin drop. Deary! Deary indeed. The lady made some upper caste type gesture that was sort of like, Well what are you going to do about it. Nothing thats what I thought. Then she cackled like the Witches in Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth. All right, I made that last part up about cackling. But it would have fit. I've been having a lot of problems lately with my imagination versus reality. I did not make the part up about Roman Polanski filming a version of Macbeth. 1969. Lookup it up. They showed it in high school, but then got in trouble because the Witches showed their boobies.

After she paid she turned to me and apologized and insisted she had no idea this was an express line-up. I would have given anything, even one of my inexplicably sore testicles for just that right come-back. But nothing. Screw this decaffeinated life. I'll wake up at 4am tonight with a total zinger. I'll thank my brain for working so hard on this problem. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank BRAIN for all its hard work. However we feel we need to move in a new direction at this time.

As a dramatic finale 100 item lady waves her finger in the air and demands a school boy to haul her stuff out to her car.

Then the cashier said to me, are these your banarners. That's exactly how she pronounced it. Banarners. Again, no come back. Yes, they're my bunyanyeers, and I'll be paying with my Innerflact card. How was that for a comeback. A little to obtuse? Agreed.

No one has any manners any more. Except me. I let people walk all over me while remaining polite, cheerful, and avoiding a fuss. For this reason I'll never be the mayor of Calgary. Please recommend this post

Statistics and Hysteria

I was just reading this analysis from Stats Canada which suggests our family demographics are changing.

Regarding gay couples:

Half of all same-sex couples in Canada lived in the three largest census metropolitan areas, Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver, in 2006. Toronto accounted for 21.2% of all same-sex couples, Montréal, 18.4% and Vancouver, 10.3%.

In 2006, same-sex couples represented 0.6% of all couples in Canada. This is comparable to data from New Zealand (0.7%) and Australia (0.6%).

Over half (53.7%) of same-sex married spouses were men in 2006, compared with 46.3% who were women.

Regarding one person households:

During this time, the number of one-person households increased 11.8%, more than twice as fast as the 5.3% increase for the total population in private households. At the same time, the number of households consisting of couples without children aged 24 years and under increased 11.2% since 2001.

On legally married versus single or common-law:

Unmarried people outnumber legally married people for the first time

For the first time, the census enumerated more unmarried people aged 15 and over than legally married people.

In 2006, more than one-half (51.5%) of the adult population were unmarried, that is, never married, divorced, separated or widowed, compared with 49.9% five years earlier. Conversely, only 48.5% of persons aged 15 and over were legally married in 2006, down from 50.1% in 2001.

These results are based on the 2006 census, which compiled the responses of almost 9 million Canadians. But not me, I was just cleaning house and found my completed but never submitted form. All the census people probably know me by now as that recalcitrant thwarter of statistics gathering. You could make a movie about it with Reese Witherspoon and that guy from Ferris Bueller's day off and it would be quite funny.

Anyway, I was about to head off to the club when Baldrick came in and breathlessly told me I must read the latest vomitous screed from the Calgary Sun.

Apparently the broader trends are not holding in Calgary, and as a result the Calgary Sun had to diatribe about how much better we are than other Canadians, to quote:

Calgary is holding the fort in a country where the notion of the traditional family is increasingly under siege, states a federal census.

Holding the fort? Against whom? The enemy? What is the traditional family and who is sieging it? These military metaphors are red flags for plain old fashioned bigotry.

States a federal census? Huh? That has to be the most poorly written most mendacious pukey line I think I have ever read in a newspaper. It is absolutely disgraceful to mingle your bigotry in with someone else's headline and make it seem like they're a bigot as well.

But that's our Calgary Sun, defending us tirelessly against statistics, trends, facts and ideas. Please recommend this post

Word of the Month

The word of the month is rodomontade.


Definition:

vainglorious boasting or bragging; pretentious, blustering talk.

Sample usage:

Mr. Harper rotomontaded endlessly about how smart and moral he was.

Mr. Black's rotomontading didn't go unnoticed by the sentencing Judge.

The Calgary Sun engaged in stupifying pro-war rotomontade.

My girlfriend whispered in my ear, a little less rotomontade and a little more action.

I suggest you use the word at the dinner table today. Surprise your loved ones with your buoyant literacy. Put your spouse in her/his place for once. No one would have comeback for a word like that. Please recommend this post

Is your face in order?

Canada's new government: Mouth open. Yelling. Finger pointing. Bad hair.

Canada is a difficult country to manage. Almost everything in Canada is based on some type of accommodation. That's why we have Catholic Schools, RCMP officers wearing Turbans, bilingual courts and Ben Mulroney on television.

One of the main differences between Canadian conservatives and Canadian liberals is that conservatives have no interest in accommodation. They want to throw everything into a blender and have it come out pure white. It's their way or no way.

Hence the current fake debate over women wearing religious facial covering while voting. Oh, the outrage. My preference would be to have Muslim women reveal their faces when voting but if they do not wish to then it is a relatively harmless compromise to show sufficient documentation. It is also, mostly, none of my business. In no way does this compromise take away my rights, any more than the happiness of a gay couple will ruin some straight couple's marriage.

I have voted in many elections in Alberta and I cannot remember ever having a returning office look at my face. It goes more like this: take driver's license, look up address on voter register, cross voter off list. With 10's of thousands of voters passing through a polling station and a horde of returning officers, it seems unlikely that seeing someone's face would have any particular deterrent effect.

Maybe the returning officers should be required to ask you if you are gay, collect stamps, or believe in evolution. Seems like common sense to me.

I pity the first returning officer who turns away a WHITE voter because their hair has been died blue and they've grown a large porn star mustache in the intervening years since they got their driver's license photo updated.

To say that something is required because it is common sense is not an argument and has no weight because common sense is just a euphemism for my opinion. We obviously know by now that Mr. Harper is a bully and not a consensus builder. Intimidating an independent body that is commissioned to oversee election fairness is very very scary scenario. It is no different than Harper's frequent intimidation of Judges. Harper's generalissimo personality will be his undoing.

Remember, it was Stephen Harper who forced the Canadian Taxpayer to spend millions of dollars defending electoral fairness laws when Harper was the head of the National Citizen's Coalition. Who was Harper representing? Sorry, Mr. Transparency would never say.

Where was the outrage when Alberta's Provincial Progressive Conservatives were found to be at the centre of the Ward 10 voting scandal in Calgary's last civic election. In this case, a large number of mail in ballots were forged. Although they got caught, the punishment was ridiculously light, and some of the players were never even brought to trial. And, of course, no finger wagging from Mr. Harper.

Our Constitution guarantees us certain rights, such as the freedom of religion, the freedom of conscience and the right to lawfully participate in elections. Mr. Harper's intimidation cannot change that. Please recommend this post

Vicki's Banjo Bowl Fantasy

Vicki Hall of the Edmonton Journal has a dream:

Can you imagine the spectacle of thousands of prairie folk invading downtown Toronto for Grey Cup? Could there be anything better than for the CFL? If the Labour Day series is any indication, we could see the Roughriders and Blue Bombers in Hogtown for the big game.

Yeah, that would be something. Saskatchewan and Winnipeg in the Grey Cup playing in Toronto. They've never played each other in the Grey Cup[1] and both teams go back to the 1930's.

It would create a huge political problem for the CFL, the CBC and the organizers in Toronto. Think of the panic when they realize that no one east of Kenora will tune in or care. Cue the Nick Nolte film.

It is unusual to read this kind of prediction in the Edmonton Journal of all places, but Most Esk fans have known for some time that they won't be seeing their team in Canada's number one sporting event, or even in the playoffs.

Politics and ratings issues aside, I agree with Ms. Hall that this could be one of the best Grey Cup match games ever. Who would you rather watch? Calgary and Toronto? BC and Montreal? Pffft I say.

Bring on the Banjo Bowl non-pareil! And that's exactly what we're going to call it. BBNP for short.

Notes:
[1] The Grey Cup was named after Lord Grey, an Edwardian aristocrat whose wife couldn't get the hang of washing her delicate lingerie in the hard mineral laden waters of Upper Canada. Its a fact.
[2]In 1951,1966,1969 and 1976 the Ottawa Rough Riders played the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Grey Cup. That would have been a hoot to watch the foreign visitors scratching their heads. Please recommend this post

Alnoor Kassam: Stop Talking!

I was wandering down a back alley across from SAIT when I saw this billboard:

This is a campaign ad for Calgary mayoralty candidate Alnoor Kassam.

Alnoor Kassam is running against 3 term Mayor Dave Bronconnier. I can't help but be a bit puzzled by the slogan A Little Less Conversation, A little More Action! I really am not sure what he means by this. The political culture in Calgary and Alberta is such that politicians do whatever they want with complete impunity behind a veil of secrecy.

I think that a Mayoralty candidate who campaigned on more transparency in civic government could hit a raw nerve and possibly score some points. Is Alnoor that candidate? Less Conversation is like telling people to shut up and doesn't lead me to believe the candidate thinks transparency is important.

Alnoor's logo creates cognitive dissonance. A green hexagon with the enlarged word GO inside it. Hexagon means stop. Green means go. Less conversation, but I have a lot of ideas.

Alnoor's campaign also may have received the kiss of death already, by way of a semi-lucid endorsement from Paul Jackson, who is probably just manipulating Alnoor to campaign against liberalism, progressive thinking, and literacy.

Bronconnier's message does not seem to be that much better. Even though he is the most well funded of all the candidates he will probably run a low key, issueless campaign. Everything is fine. Like David Emerson, he'll just tell the voters that he has to carry on with his important work. He is already using passive meaningless language like, leading with passion and purpose.

Please recommend this post

Kent Austin: Bigger than Jesus

So RidersFan is sitting out on the pool deck enjoying the last few days of summer, when Rider's Coach Kent Austin comes along. Being a nice guy Austin takes some time to chat with RidersFan about football and whatever. RidersFan and Coach notice a cooler of cold beer on the other side of the pool. Coach says, hey, you want me to grab you a beer? RidersFan says sure. Coach Austin then walks on the water across the pool, grabs two beers, walks back across the water, pops open both beers and hands one to RidersFan.[1]

RidersFan's jaw drops. Finally when he can talk again, he says, hey how did you do that. Easy, says Coach, the bottles have twist tops, very easy to open.

Sunday, September 9: Roughriders at Winnipeg

Prediction: Winnipeg by a few points.

You have to pick the underdog once in a while even though my prediction seems unlikely. All winning streaks must come to an end. Somebody somewhere needs to put a stop to the green surge.

Friday, September 7: Calgary at Edmonton

Ick. Don't make me watch this game. Don't make me call it. The odds are in favour of Calgary. Historically, they have a slight edge in the Labor day re-match. Also, Edmonton is demoralized and the towns folks have started calling for the head of the coach. How this helps is anyone's guess.

Bus loads of drunk Calgarians[2], who started drinking at about 2pm today, should be arriving in Edmonton right about...now.

Maciocia isn't helping either. He was muttering about making some visits to Santa Maria Goretti Church, which is near Commonwealth Stadium. No word on how long it will take to get that message through. Maybe watch a few game tapes just in case.

Update: Calgary 20 Edmonton NOT 20


Notes:
[1] Punch line ripped off from old beer commercial. Otherwise, events as described actually occurred.
[2] Rhymes with Vulgarians. Ha.
Please recommend this post

My Mulroney Rant

Our former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stopped taking his medication and is now talking to the media. Like Richard Nixon, he looks back and feels he got a bad deal from history and wants to do a makeover on his image. Although Mulroney is quite wealthy, the National Post has offered their image making services for free. I feel embarrassed for Mulroney, it is not often that someone is so dumb they lose an argument with a dead guy. There are some serious head issues going on here.

Mulroney has held a long and persistent delusion that Pierre Trudeau ruined Canada and that God himself appointed him to fix it. These delusions of grandeur are not uncommon in politics, but seldom do they run so deep. The main outcomes of Mulroney-to-the-rescue were the Reform Party, the Parti Québécois, the disintegration of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party and the subsequent disenfranchisement of millions of moderate Red Tories. Moderate and tolerant people in the Western Provinces would like to thank Mr. Mulroney very much for turning us over to a bunch of head in ass crazy lunatics. Not to mention ruining TV for ever through the untalented fruit of his loins.

We have more important issues in 2007 than what Trudeau did or didn't do when he was teething. This latest attack is not about Canada or history, it is about Mulroney's easily bruised ego, and his lifelong hobby of seeking revenge on the vast multitudes of those who apparently betrayed him. Lucien Bouchard was a duplicitous separatist? Oh dear, lets write an Opera. Who the hell cares whether Lucien Bouchard is invited to your funeral? I wish Mr. Mulroney a long and healthy life, but when he does die, I hope this guy gives him equal time.

If I wanted to get dragged back into the absolute moral black hole of the 1980's I would grow my big hair back, re-cultivate the magnum PI porn star mustache, and go looking for those 4 inch wide ties I used to wear. But no, I have no interest in going back to the 80's.

Canada is largely a country that cannot be governed to the satisfaction of any particular group or region. Our history proves this. The fact that we did not get our own constitution until 1982 is retarded and backwards. The fact that Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Religion was not legally enshrined until Trudeau's Charter[1] in 1982 is retarded. The American people got a Bill of Rights in 1789, the British in 1689, the French in 1789, the Finns in 1919 and so on. Clearly, Canada was behind the human rights curve by a long shot. The fact that we have no elected senate is shameful. Liberals should have been at the forefront of the debate from decades ago, yet it was left up to political extremists who view an elected senate as a back door to assert their ridiculous views over Parliament and the rest of us.

No one politician or party is to blame for Canada's long term issues, but at the same time Mulroney did absolutely nothing to fix anything.

Mulroney has no business criticizing Trudeau for opposing conscription. In both world wars it was a debate that very nearly broke up the country. Mulroney is not dumb, he knows that by playing verbal games with the conscription issue he can further divide a country that is conflicted over our involvement in Afghanistan. And he thinks this makes him look good?

Mulroney was much younger than Trudeau, born in 1939. At that time the Mackenzie King Government (Liberal) and the American government (FDR - Democrat) were turning away Jewish refugees from Europe. It is likely that many of those Jewish people died as a result of being forced back to Europe. To me this is a far more serious historical issue than whether Trudeau opposed conscription, but you are unlikely to hear Mulroney talk about it because it doesn't serve as a suitable platform for his vanity. It is debatable whether people in Canada knew about the holocaust at this point, or what our Governments knew about it in the 1930's. To say that Trudeau opposed conscription because he was anti-semitic or didn't care about the death of European Jews seems like a fairly ignorant thing to say.

As a person who as never known war or conscription in my life time, I consider it highly inappropriate for me to pass judgment on those of a previous generation who either went to war voluntarily, or refused to go. If you are not faced with that choice yourself, you are hardly qualified to talk about someone else's character. Mulroney was a baby when WWII broke out, and apparently has not moved forward that much.

If Trudeau said or did things that were anti-semitic, he deserves to have a light shone on it. Antisemitism is a much larger problem in our society than most people will admit. I'm not really sure what Mulroney can claim as his contribution to stopping antisemitism in Canada. Probably just some self-serving rhetoric here and there.

Final word: Mr Mulroney, if you chop the head off a dead man it does not make you taller.

Notes:
[1] The Diefenbaker Bill of Rights in 1960 was a noble document and forward thinking but it was an Act of Parliament and not part of a constitution.
[2] My spell checker does not recognize Mulroney as a word and suggests Moneybag and Melloney as alternatives.)
Please recommend this post

Friday Night Music

Friday nights 12 music tracks as selected by a soulless cold piece of silicon. And I'm not referring to my ex. I'm referring to my CPU, which throws out pseudo-random numbers to Windows Media Player, which in turn examines the number and translates it into a track in its library, being careful never ever to play anything by Jimi Hendrix. Why? I must know why.

12. Don't Stop Swaying - Sophie B. Hawkins
11. River - Madeleine Peyroux and Kathryn Dawn Lang. Composed by Joni Mitchel
10. The Yellow Furze - Karan Casey
9. The Old Ways - Jenny Allen
8. Walkin After Midnight - Patsy Cline
7. Afternoons and Coffeespoons - Crash Test Dummies
6. Raglan Road - Loreena McKennitt
5. Pacing the Cage - Bruce Cockburn
4. Softly She Goes - Gordon Lightfoot
3. Where Is My Love - Lucinda Williams
2. Sweetsexywoman - Sophie B. Hawkins
1. For You Blue - Beatles,George Harrison

Bonus YouTube video:

Kiran Ahluwalia - Koka



Unbelievable! Please recommend this post

Edmonton Eskimos on bye Week

It is a bye week for all the western CFL teams.

Hey, esks fan, its a bye week, take a deep breath and
chill out.




No wait, don't take a deep breath.

Well at least you have something to look forward to:



Get to the buffet early.


Disclaimer: don't put a plastic bag over your head its dangerous and you could suffer serious consequences up to and including death its a fact. Please recommend this post

Summer Reading - Part 1

Alternate Title 1: Government By Outrage



I just finished reading Dr. Kevin Taft's latest book Democracy Derailed. Derailed is probably a generous word. The book is basically about government scandal in Alberta and the undermining of basic democracy. I think it is fair to say Alberta is at an all time low point in terms of its democratic traditions.

Almost all of the issues Dr. Taft discusses are not new to me. From the Asbestos removal at the Holy Cross Hospital, to Multi-Corp, to cabinet Ministers owning Oil companies - it has all been out there. However when you put it all together in one book it leaves you with a rather foul taste.

This is a book all Albertans should read. Dr. Taft has a very good writing style. He explains the issues clearly, providing a lot of detail and back-up, while not talking down to the reader.

The book's website has a very good quiz on some Alberta history and issues. Regrettably, I scored very low on the quiz and I was quite embarrassed. It is an indication that there is always surprises and false assumptions if you don't educate yourself.

Take the quiz. Let me know how you did.


Disclosure: I have no relationship with the Alberta Liberal Party. Please recommend this post

We Support LibelChill.ca

Bad title. Sounds like we support libel chill when in fact we support libelchill.ca which is against libel chill.




This is an important issue. Under current Canadian law someone can be sued for libel for almost anything. Our laws have not kept up to our technological advancement. As a member of several different blogging communities I link to hundreds of blogs each of whom link to hundreds of other blogs and resources which continues ad infinitum.

There are currently lawsuits underway that argue that web site owners should be liable for the content they link to whether directly or indirectly. This has massive implications for standard online technologies such as blogs, aggregators, search engines and Wikis.

The end result is that authors will not exercise their right to free speech or join online communities simply out of fear. The high cost of legal defense will cause many to cave in even though there is no case.

Anyway, please visit libelchill.ca and educate yourself on the current lawsuit and the defendants need for your support. I would also recommend visiting section15 for more background information. Please recommend this post