A new terror threat on the horizon

I'm at a friends place in Grande Prairie for the weekend, and came across this headline:
Flaming SUV rams Glasgow airport terminal: Two suspects arrested in Scotland

He'd already heard about it on the news. "Derka derkas?" I asked. Early reports list them as south-asian. Tamil Tigers? Tibetan Separatists?

How do you type "derka derka" with a heavy Chinese accent?

Oh bloody hell, Canada

Nearly three-quarters of older Canadians agreed with the suggestion that it was because Canadians share common history, heroes and national symbols. By contrast, 37 per cent of the those between 18 and 34 said it was because there was no "strong national identity that individuals and groups are expected to adopt."

Oh yeah, this is going to carry a country far. This "post-modern" notion of a one-size-fits-all concept of nation: the political block of people who don't have to conform to anything; is one of the most dangerous and ultimately self-destructive notions that post-modernism has ever come up with.

And if its straight on Canada's doorstep, its as good a time as any to happily spend Dominion Day weekend happily reminding all of you:

I am not Canadian.
I am Albertan, and will never again lower myself
to the level of being some "Canadian".

If you want to have any moral and philosophical edge in the coming war(s) that post-modernism will inflict upon us, Alberta as the shining beacon in space all alone in the night is your best bet.

Mr. Griffiths noted that an attachment to national symbols such as Olympic hockey or the Timbit has remained strong even as knowledge of the country's history and practices — what he called "civic literacy"— has declined.

"Our nationalism becomes kind of sentimental," he said. "It becomes cheering for hockey teams, it becomes going to Timmy's."

Resources for dual booting

Well, today I bought myself a nice new laptop to congradulate myself on the new job thing.

Unfortunately, HP has decided to go all-discless, and instead do disc-free restores. This means dual-booting with Linux is about to become a pain.

So the following sites are of use to me. And possibly you:

• How to dual boot Windows Vista and Linux Ubuntu?
• Part 2: Dual-Booting Vista and Linux
• Dual boot Windows XP on a pre-installed Vista PC
• How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first)
• Don’t Dual Boot! Use Virtual PC 2007 Instead (Virtual PC probably won't handle 64-bit instructions within a 32-bit Vista though)
• HOW TO: Dual-boot XP and Vista

Summertime in the Void

Mark Steyn's liveblogging of the last several months of the Conrad Black trial has been the definitive source for information on the proceedings (excepting those who feel that Conrad Black is guilty because he crossed Jean Chretien or something).

Well, the jury went for deliberations yesterday, but Steyn's newsfeed isn't dying down so soon. Today he writes:

Oh, well. The entire press corps - Chicagoans, New Yorkers, Brits, Canucks, the lot - stampeded into court, as did all four defendants and families, to hear the jury's first note to the judge. It read as follows:

"Dear Judge,

"We will be meeting today from 9am to 4.45pm. Tomorrow, 6/29, we will meet from 9am to 1pm."

Thrilling stuff.

(Seriously, though, the whole site is worth quite the read. He should archive it in .pdf for future generations or some such thing.)

Post #800 Baby!

For a while it didn't feel like this day would ever come. Yet here we are, and time to celebrate another posting milestone. Unlike last time, the dreaded "I hate you Blogger Beta" timeframe, there have been practically no changes made to the blog over the past 100 posts. What we have had are lots of posts, and I'll crunch the numbers as has become the tradition. Again, the monthly auto-counting saves me lots of time.

In April, I made 31 posts in 27 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes, for a posting rate of one post every 0.8573 days (ie every 21 hours, 0 minutes, 25 seconds). In May, 38 posts in the 31 days for a rate of one post every 0.8158 days (ie every 19 hours, 34 minutes, 44 seconds). In June, so far I've made 30 posts in 27 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes for a posting rate of one post every 0.9157 days (ie every 21 hours, 58 minutes, 40 seconds). In total, we are looking at 99 posts in 85.60 days, for a total posting rate of one post every 0.86 days (ie every 20 hours, 45 minutes, 10.91 seconds). Not bad not bad.

Anyways, now for a look at what exciting posts you could have read here over the past couple three months:Best reads:

Hockey
• The Oilers had a lousy 2006/2007 season. Even more lousy when they decided to be good at an inopportune moment.
• Whenever an Ontario team suffers, I sing a merry tune.
• I noticed at the start of the postseason how Detroit was poised to make history, by for the first time in their franchise defeating an Alberta team in the playoffs. Calgary sucks.
• Only Harry Neale could make a Greg Louganis joke and bomb. I do the first of many Neale dissections. Here is my second, longer version.
• Schadenfreude is a bitch, which is why I came up with two pie-in-the-sky dreams about how the 2007 NHL playoffs would wind down.
• When the playoffs seemed set to feature two of Edmonton's most hated former players, I tried bringing in a new way to look at it.
• When Ottawa lost, I was happy. I'm sticking to the argument that got me in so much trouble at left-leaning Oilers blogs: I refuse to cheer for Ottawa a month after paying 40% of my income in taxation.
• A Chris Pronger joke, ripping on Bob Cole, and me being right. All things you've seen before, but its always nice for them to all happen at once like this.

Crime
• I predict the ethnic component of the Virginia Tech shooting. I was close, but not spot on. I also took the time to compare to an incident in Calgary a week earlier.
• I had some further thoughts on Virginia Tech, including a shocking difference between Americans and Canadians...and its not the one you expected.
• Spree-shooters of Korean descent, the ire of privacy laws, and more. A Virginia Tech pot pourri as it were.
• I'm surprised nobody commented on the title for this entry, moreso than tearing apart a memorial to the deceased gunman.
• Sudanese refugees find themselves at the front of another Edmonton double-murder. Why couldn't they escape by coming to a safe city like ours? I take them to task for bringing their own tribal hatreds onto our front lawns.
• Not really hockey related, but Oilers blogger mudcrutch79 takes on the EPS's abuse of power in the Oilers playoff run. I make some comments that are not well received.
• Chris Benoits death occured a few days before Post #800, and a local blogger is found expressing sympathies that after-the-fact seem misplaced.

Unenvironmental politics
• Why is a Fido ad campaign (which seems now to have ended) feature a relapsed sodomite?
• Belinda's retirement harkened me back to a happier time in days gone by...literally, since just days before I got excited when Toronto was eliminated.
• Another lousy politican who sleeps with questionable men retired in April, and again I celebrate.
• When somebody dies, you sometimes feel bad. When a person responsible for mass genocide dies, only liberals would shed a tear.
• PPolitical bias in our schools? I'll buy that. What I won't buy is the story that I'm on the winning side.
• President Bush is taking a lot of flack this year. But one man is giving him lots of flack with no moral leg to stand on. None. Whatsoever.
• Frank Miller dares to defy the media's inherent left-wing bias, and pays a Bat-price for his Bat-misdeed.
• With the Great Satan (America) being relatively quiet, and the Secondary Satan (Britain) paying a price, and their terror cells in Fifth Cousin to Satan Thrice Removed (Canada) broken up, Muslim terrorists have concentrated on the next Jew-led government trying to bring on a new crusades. Problem is, their choice makes no sense. Lebanon?
• The Great Satan isn't sitting idle though. Are Lutherans going to be the next al Quaida? If not, why?
• A CNN moment in the Republican candidates debate left me feeling a little soured.
• With al Quaida's Lebanon incursions, Palestine seems on the bring of war. Some feel President Bush should do something, and I am inclined to agree.
• Along with Chris Pronger, George W. Bush can apparently be evil and a duck simultaneously.
• Canada's Senate is dealing with an urgent local matter. Sounds about right, no?
• Alberta's liquor laws are soon to be...made worse? I try to stem the tide.
• A dispute over where to put high-voltage power lines has been making big news in Alberta lately. Possible violence at hearings, threats to board members, secret hiring of Private Investigators, angry protests being bussed in from the city...sounds like a great time for a pun.

Stupid environment
• Allowing vehicles to idle for more than 3 minutes is a crime, according to Edmonton City Council. Forcing dozens of vehicles to drive 50-60 kilometres a trip dead-empty? That's a sensible civic policy. (Both simultaneously is the sort of thing that makes you cry).
• "Canadians willing to pay the price of Kyoto" was a popular headline back in April and May. It's too bad that at the same time the NDP make huge political hay demanding gas price inquiries, and nobody pieces the two together.
• The City of Edmonton sent out a little newspaper to people encouraging them to recycle. It didn't work on me.
• A new blog inspired by CalgaryGrit (who turns out to be from Edmonton) was formed a couple months ago. I had the first comment on it, taking apart some Kyoto-related nonsense.
• Edmonton Transit got new Hybrid busses to help reduce emissions. Unfortunately, retraining some drivers may have helped even more.
• Everybody, with the possible exception of high-profile global warming activists, must pay the costs of reducing our standard of living.

Comedy & Entertainment
• Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott has left Spacedock for the last time...
• The wrong person won this year's French elections. Not because of policy, or ideology, or personality, but for the humour.
• Cheri O'Teri has a new movie coming out. There's only one reason for me to care.
• As an avid lover of Gwen Stacey, I felt it necessary to criticize her role in Spider-Man 3...for being too large.
• As many of you know, I did mini-reviews for most (soon to be all) episodes of Day Break, despite its mid-season cancellation. The granddaddy of them all, however, was this "live" weblog of the 13th and final episode.
• 'Hip-ster TV' was a bit of a fad in the 60s, and I begrudge what it does to otherwise decent nostalgia-TV.
• While re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series) on DVD, I come across a reminder of why the musical episode fell flat.
• There's a new Ramones tribute album out. I bought er...downloaded it, and nicely graph the impression it leaves up me.
• Why do a test with a pop-culture figure when said figure makes such a good pop-culture test already?

Baseball & other sports
• Women's tennis, as many of you know, is a passion of mine. Mainly because the women are gorgeous.
• Roland-garros' French Open this year had some quality tennis action. Of course, what we really cared about was how the finals failed to compete with the semis when it came to sex appeal.
• The Olympics are coming to London in 2012, and the logo sucks. Especially compared to my idea for Vancouver-Whistler 2010.
• "What inhabits the secondary position"...if Shakespeare wrote the script to "Major Leage 2" it probably would have sucked even more.
• The Cubs have had a wild ride this season. Last week it got even more wild.
• Interleague play is always a treat, because shitty AL teams *cough cough* Blue Jays *cough cough* find they get a sudden boost to their W-L record.

Finally, I posted about Edmonton/Alaska/Mexico in a post I can't quite assign to a category, but which I am quite proud of.

Headlines

Colby Cosh wrote recently about the Globe and Mail's "slam dunk" headline ("Paris Liberated").

Which is why, after the past several weeks of reading into the tales of the Alberta Energy & Utilities Board Committee hearings (relevent background links #1, #2, #3^†,#4, and #5), I feel sorry for the headline writers at major newspapers (Journal/Herald/SUN in particular), because it seems in this entire story they have missed out on an amazing possible headline:

NIMBY in Rimbey

That nobody other than me has written these words before is more than a bit of a shame.

^† From what I've heard on the issue, actual local residents were not entirely thrilled by a bunch of hippies from the city being trained and organized and bussed down for the protest. (Again, why do leftists enjoy protesting so much). Its upset some people enough that I've heard somebody in the town has been destroying the protesters signs and publicly burning them on the spot -- and its a well-known local rather than a PI from what I've been told. Funny how that didn't make it into the Straight Goods articles...

Update, 2:25pm: I spoke too soon: Neil Waugh wrote in the Edmonton SUN on April 3rd that the Lavesta Area group was "the NIMBY from Rimbey"

Maybe he just doesn't believe the Edmonton SUN's account of the incident?

Yesterday Mike Jenkinson blogged:

The sad wrestling news of the day is the sudden death of Edmonton's own Chris Benoit and his family in Atlanta. Chris was in the top 3 of my favorite wrestlers of all time, and he'll be missed terribly.

I suppose that this goes to show what timing is all about. Assumably at the time he wrote that, Mike was unaware of this story.

I assume its also time for the standard caveat that Benoit is only alleged (or in the U.S. do dead men get guilticized regardless of trials? It's not an idle question or an anti-American dig, but I noticed for example the Virginia Tech shooter isn't 'alleged').

Still, a little rough. I suppose its very Christian of him to express remorse over the incident and say that the man will be missed. Mike's a decent guy though, from anybody who remembers his columns, so I have a feeling he's slightly eating those words this morning.

Update, June 27 2007 11:05am: As the commenter below has noted, Mike has updated with more on the story, including noting that as I suspected, he didn't know the full extent of the tale when the post was made. This is, I believe, the first and last time anybody will ever link to my blog under the heading "This would explain all the hits I got on the site today".

A 21st century Cubs fan question

So far the modern-era Cubs have been most famous for on-field violence and unfortunate behaviour by fans.

Now we have finally acheived both.

(As an aside, somebody should create an archive of all the Cubs related violence this season. How many fights have there been this year? I think the Cubs have more non-Barrett related scraps than any other team, and then add in the new poster boy for "Clubhouse Cancer" and you've got a wild season before the All-Star break even begins.)

Politics on a hockey blog: fair trade

I haven't had much to say about hockey lately (hey, imagine Cherepanov and Esposito on the same team...it could have happened K-Lowe...it could have happened).
Oddly enough, mc79 hockey has had a recent post about Edmonton Police and their shoddy behaviour during the Oilers Cup run last year. I've posted on it a couple of times, I will be posting more on it tomorrow...just to give you a heads up. It's getting pretty intense.

Update, 3:09pm: I have made another comment, and boy is it a doozy.

Update, Jun 26 2007 2:33am: The thread continues, with a surprising number of people willing to personally attack me (and imply I'm a criminal) and defend EPS for no particular good reason. (Bitch must have deserved it!)

The Drinking Age in Alberta

Well, this is a long post a long time coming. It's time for me to say I told you so. Then I'll make some suggestions about what should happen, and when they don't happen and other undesirable things happen and bad things continue to happen and/or get worse, I shall say I told you so again.

First off, the scheduled "I told you so"s. Way way back in March of '06, I warned that the removal of Ralph Klein from office appeared to spell a serious danger to the sensible hold on the natural urge to place restrictions on liquor consumption. Specifically, you may recall that I wrote:

the next candidate for Premier should be a drinker. Not a louse or anything, but a good hardcore Churchill-style drinker. An outright alcoholic is probably a bad thing, but he definitely should toe the line a little bit. A drinker in the job would show we have a real man for the position: one who isn't afraid to lay in bed drinking a Guinness at 3:30am watching Yes, Minister on DVD after finishing a blog post. A guy who's willing to take all the bullshit stress that comes with such a high position and then slam some Jack Daniels on his downtime to leave him emotionally ready to do the job again the next morning. A Premier of the Province of Alberta who can hang around at a pub working out the issues of the day until eventually stumbling on the brilliant clarity that such sessions typically bring (such as "why don't we make health care entirely 100% private and user pay and make grocery stores nationalized and free" or "if she's gonna wear a tube top and miniskirt to Filthy Freakin' McNasty's then I should be allowed to just walk up and squeeze her ass with no possible legal consequence" or "if we changed the lyrics to the Skynard song just a little, Sweet Home Alberta would be a kick-ass national anthem").

If Oberg/Norris/Morton/Stelmach are all casual drinkers or something, then we may have a problem. I might have to join the campaign to run this province prematurely. I had hoped for a Norris/Morton soft separatist in power first just to let things build up, but as I guzzle my 2nd AGD in 45 minutes and ponder a couple shots of Jagermeister before bedtime, I am left concerned that we might not have time to dilly-dally. The next Premier of Alberta has to be some sort of drunkard. Or we're all in trouble.

Well, now we have Stelmach in charge, Morton leading the cry for bringing the drinking age up to 19, and...well, nobody cares where Oberg and Norris are at the moment, but I can't see them speaking too loudly against it.

The problem is, this is a stupid idea. (The Edmonton Journal is for it, which is a good first sign. Of course, Todd Babiuk is against it, so perhaps the media metric isn't the indicator I should be using here). For one thing, nobody has shown that "18 year olds" are causing serious bar problems that "19 year olds and up" are not. For another, the problem at the bars has to do in general with overcrowding and being unable to keep up with demand, which was a problem of the previous "solution" (see, for example, bringing in heavier restrictions on the number of people permitted in an establishment on Whyte Avenue). More importantly, its a serious restriction on the freedom of what adults can do: bringing in a subclass of adults ("aged 18") who have fewer rights than a subgroup of adults ("19 and up"). It's a logical inconsistency that only Alberta/Manitoba/Quebec have worked around, and its more than just a rotten shame that Alberta is considering leaving an exclusive club of forward thinkers.

In fact, its the subject of directional thinking that seems to strike at the core of this. The U.S., to one of her great detriments, subscribes to this theory that there is a group of adults for whom every right in the Union is bestowed upon save one -- magical fire-water. If you're 18-20 in the USA, you find yourself able to join the army, or vote, or legally be in enforceable contracts, or be unable to be tried as a minor, as able to run for all offices except the Presidency, or enter into sexual relationships with vastly older persons, etc. etc. etc. But to have a beer with your dinner at Red Lobster? No no no, that simply cannot be done.

Meanwhile, in Europe the opposite approach is taken. Germany's drinking age is 18, unless you're only drinking beer or wine, then its 16. Other countries such as France and Austria, follow this message. Italy and Greece have straight up drinking ages of 16. Many countries require you to be 18 to buy alcohol, but you can drink it, even in bars, at 16. (So bootlegging becomes not quite so serious a worry). Furthermore, Wikipedia notes that in European countries the enforcement is lackluster at best and a well-acknowledged joke at least. As the line goes, if in Europe, they will serve you a drink so long as you can get up onto the barstool.

Now here's the rub: all of these good anti-Americans out there like to brag about how Canada is more continental than America, how we are more lax and liberal and European about so many matters. Well, that sounds like great news if your looking for a fag-wedding, but if you want to dare consume alcohol in a public street or stay up until 6am having a drink, you're sure not going to feel like you're in a very liberal continental nation.

There's an easy way to cut down on all this bar violence and worry. And no, it doesn't involve privacy invasion scanning software. What it involves is a little common sense. A more liberal approach, if you can imagine these words being typed by my little fingers. I stress, with no irony whatsoever, that I am stone sober as I write this entry.

• First off, if the drinking age in Alberta is to go anywhere, it should be going down. 16 sounds like a good end-point, though at this juncture I'm not sure we should be ruling out 14. Maybe 14 to buy at a liquor store or drink in a restaurant, and 16 to go into a bar. We'll see.
• Secondly, the caps on the number of bars in places like 17th Avenue in Calgary or Whyte Avenue in Edmonton need to go by the wayside as quickly and as easily as possible. Want to know a reason for so much of this bar violence? There are lines to get in. Once in the bar is half-packed and there are lines to get served. When everybody gets kicked out at 2am (more on this later), there are lines to get pizza and donairs. Putting this many people in lines is dangerous enough, let alone when one or two of them are drunk. Unfortunately, as Edmonton's population has exploded (mostly with young men who like to drink), arse-bandits like Michael Phair have gone and put burdoning regulations on the number of establishments that can be opened in places like Whyte. However, since there are already bars there, people flock to them, and the end result is crowds of people wanting places to sit and drink that the City of Edmonton has ruled they don't get.
• If you're at a bar in a major Albertan metropolis these days, you aren't going to be surrounded by a bunch of white bread Central Alberta hicks. You'll be around a bunch of these East Indians who love to commit violent acts. You'll encounter guys from the local vietnamese gang. A bunch of black guys who think they're the next coming of 50 Cent. In other words, you are now elbow to elbow (see point #2) with some of post-moderninity's least desirable ethnics self-ghettoed losers who are more interested in keeping up their reputation with similar men of their ilk then functioning as members of a sensible society. For the record, Newfies and all those Quebec shitheads who've been polluting the bars lately fall into this category as well.
• Fourthly, the mandatory 2am closing time has long outlived her usefulness. Anybody ever notice all the violence that takes place at 2am? All the people fighting for cabs and pizzas and women trying to leave with the 17th guy they made eyes at on the dance floor at Bar Wild while the 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 23rd, and 25th guys are all trying to leave with her as well. Notice anything in common here? Some sort of combining thread? Any economists in the crowd would quickly jump up with the answer, I suspect: allocation of resources. Suddenly, at 2am, thousands upon thousands of drunk partyers are thrown out into the streets. Taxicabs, already hard to get because no new licences have been allowed in the past decade of growth, tend to avoid Whyte because of the violence, reducing further the number of cabs. Therefore these people aren't going anywhere, for there is nowhere but home for them to go and no way to get there. Don't be surprised when you start seeing violence arising from such a circumstance. Now if there was no such thing as last call, what would happen? Well, not all bars would stay open all night (South American and China, for example, have no closing time, and some bars close at set times, and others will remain open all night as long as a certain number of clientele are still on the premises), but a few would. Those who want to still drink at 4am might go there. Others might just want to head home. More importantly, any bar that closes at 2am won't be responsible for letting out the entire bar population at the same time. (For those who say that they would never do this, BPs on Whyte and often The Next Act Pub will close at midnight or 1am, even on weeknights...clearly bars will make up their own minds).
• To expand on the point above, its time that the City of Edmonton be serious about entering the 24-hour society. Whyte Avenue busses should be running all night. If taxicabs on Whyte are so scarce, maybe the city should license another 50-150 cars that are permitted only to operate between midnight and 4am and/or only permitted to pick-up passengers between Whitemud and Saskatchewan Drive, 114th street to 99th.
• Finally, its time too that the province and the city both think about relaxing some of the 1920s-era restrictions on booze. Do what New Orleans does: maybe set up a zone from 99th street to 109th street, 81st Avenue to 83rd Avenue where open alcohol in non-glass containers is legal. Have it run from the start of May Long Weekend until the end of Labour Day Weekend, and close off selected side-streets (Whyte cannot be closed off, at least until the City smartens up and puts a railway overpass at University (76th) Avenue to allow east-west throughflow). Encourage drinking and partying on Whyte Avenue. If this is unpalatable to the city, pick another area of town that can be closed off in this fashion [downtown, perhaps...no late night traffic there! -ed] and licence the hell out of that strip for bar traffic. Make it the new late-night party destination. [seriously, how about the area around Northlands, so the city isn't worried about the dead zone surrounding our hockey stadium? -ed] For Pete's sake, New Orleans partiers were delighted to hear that we had an active bar strip in Edmonton with an 18-year old drinking age. Market this. Use this. Maybe we could lose the reputation of a boring city with nothing to do if the powers-that-be weren't too busy concentrating on ending any fun activity in this city not related to shoving things up your ass.

Incidently, AADAC (not the most unbiased source when it comes to controlling drug and alcohol use) put out a recent paper arguing against raising the drinking age.

I think my final point here has to be: alcohol may be the cause of all life's problems, pace Homer Simpson, but it can also be the solution if the city gets its act in gear.

Computer stores soon to be on the back of milk cartons

Today I went to CompuSmart southside and discovered...it was all closed up. (Naturally, even though I had my digital camera, I never bothered to take a picture). At Memory Express I learned that Compusmart across the entire province has closed its doors as of today. (So much for that hot economy, eh?)

BCOM's store at 118th and 156th street closed it doors too, I seemed to think. Today I learned its just moved a block further down the street than I bothered to go. Whoops. Meanwhile, BCOM southside has basically become a little room where they show you all the product on their website that they can order in. Back to Best Buy, I suppose.

Bonus computer link: Canada RAM, the Canuck equivalent of NewEgg.com, can ship even Notebook RAM directly to your door.

Wisdom from the long road of life

Whoever said life was about the journey and not about the destination never travelled anywhere with my parents.

- Feynman and Coulter's Love Child

A great contest

AlbertaSource.ca, Alberta's online encyclopedia.

Is this the worst waste of a concept ever? Or the worst waste of a URL ever?

You decide.

FACLC's Pop Culture Test

Gina Gershon has a hard time with personality tests (ahem!) before breakfast or her daily latte.

The above comes from an article called "The EW Pop Culture Personality Test: Gina Gershon". Immediately my own sort of test came to mind:

1. Do you know who Gina Gershon is when you hear/read the name?
2. Does this page help?
3. "Gershon — a part-time rocker who's occasionally known as Ugly Betty's Fabia — can be seen as Denis Leary's steady on the new season of FX's Rescue Me." Do you know who this is now?
4. How about now?
5. Still no clue?

I had to go all the way to #4 before I was able to say "oh, the chick who did the voice of Six the sex-slave android in Trippin' the Rift". Without, I'd have moved right along to #5.

Feel free to post your own scores in the comments.

Marilyn Manson scored low on music appreciation. Go figure

Click on the above image to get a close-up view of my impressions after a first listening on We're a Happy Family: Ramones Tribute Album.

Bonus fun: The debut use of the new "music" label.

Bonus cover: The Ramonas, an all-girl Ramones cover band, does a "Blitzkrieg Bop" that puts Rob Zombie to shame. Dude should stick to movies I don't watch.

For those who spend Tuesday nights wondering....

• Hey, how can I make caramelized onions myself?
• Is it possible to get a desktop wallpaper featuring Cherie Cymbalisty, the Cowboys Calgary bartender who recently was making out with Prince Harry?

Jays suck

I gotta tell you, it ain't often you see a reliever warming up in the first inning...

Those still unconvinced of the need for Senate Reform, please raise your hands

There is currently a bill being brought through the Senate devoted to the mind-numbingly important task of...

...saving historic lighthouses.

Now the question becomes whether or not the House of Commons can follow the Senate's lead and get the bill passed before the end of the session. My question [which is actually a question ending in "?" I hope, rather than the non-questioning question just posted -ed] is simply: why?

Why on earth should lighthouse protection be a matter for the federal government at all? Sure the consitution can be read to mean that lighthouses fall under the federal government's ocean purview, just like how it can these days be read to say almost anything (c.f. poofter rights). That doesn't mean something that has to be considered a local issue for B.C. and Maritime voters need tie up the attention of the Canadian Parliament.

There's also a western alienation issue at stake here [can you really say that when discussing a B.C. issue sponsored by Senator Pat Carney? -ed], because I don't remember the feds coming to the rescue of Alberta's grain elevators.

With any luck, this bill will die a quick death on the order paper.

At long last, a Professional Paradigm Shift

Yes, effective the end of this month, I will no longer work for the company I currently work for but am not allowed to talk about for security reasons.

Instead, I announce that I will start work at a new company, which I am...not allowed to talk about for security reasons.

Congratulations without details may be left in the comments. Barring that, personal congratulations will be excepted later this evening at several west end bars.

The Thane of Baseball

Over at Rick's Micellany you can enjoy the surreal experience of watching two Shakespearean actors doing an Elizabethan-era rendition of "Who's on First".

To be anti-Bush is to be anti-brain

Okay, lets cover the talking points here, shall we?

1. Bush and his evil masters Rove/Cheney are evil
2. Bush was always a lame duck
3. Bush is now becoming a lame duck
4. Even though he hasn't been evil yet, now that he's a lame duck he will become evil.

Any day now its gonna come true...just you wait!

What do you do when 1/7 of your castmembers can sing?

Well, if you're Joss Whedon you make a musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

However, what most people didn't know up until that point, that was quickly discovered after, was that one castmember, James "Spike" Marsters, is a member of an LA based rock band ("Ghost of the Robot" or some such thing).

Well, here's the YouTube video...didya notice that he sings it with his full SoCal accent, leaving behind the British gag?


And here's the lyrics.

Update, 2:19am: My bad, that should read 2/8, since Anthony Stewart Head also sang in that episode, and he can sing as well (and in a real Brit accent no less).

Civil war may be in Palestine's future

JERUSALEM - Gunmen of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah sharply escalated their fight for supremacy on Tuesday, with Hamas taking over much of the northern Gaza Strip in what began to look increasingly like a civil war.

If that wasn't enough...al Quaida and Lebanese fighters continue to battle in other parts of Palestine.

With all of this turmoil going on, the U.S. has to be able to stand up and take decisive action. President Bush needs to deliver a bold, concise, and strong speech that makes it clear how the civilized world should react to this new crisis in the Middle East.

In the interests of being a good neighbour, I have written a rough draft of the President's speech in response to the Mid-East crisis:

Cool.

In all seriousness, from any reasonable western viewpoint, this can't help but be a good thing. First off, every day that the Arabs spend killing each other is another day they aren't going about the business of killing us. Secondly, every violent action al Qaida takes in Palestine breaks down a little bit of the support they get around the world by self-declared "enemies of the Joos". To be honest, there's not a lot of logical disconnect in that corner of the globe, but even the most vehement anti-American Islamic nutjob has to wonder where this global terrorism thing gets them if Palestinians start musing that they were better off living under the big Jew-rat tent rather than the liberal and homogeneous wackjob Muslim one.

Do expiry dates mean anything?

I went to go make supper tonight, and was shocked when the Kraft Diner I was making came out dark brown instead of the traditional orange.

So I started to investigate whether KD can go bad. No firm answer has been reached, but as a bonus I came across this donations guide for food hampers.

It's all fairly basic stuff until you get near the end, and come across the following:

Things that we are always in desperate need of, but never (or rarely) seem to get them as donations:

* African-American hair care products (shampoo & conditioner made for A-A hair, straightening or curling products, etc.)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

No matter how poor they are, black women can't resist getting their hair curled!

I saw this in a movie once

A terrified gamekeeper had a lucky escape after he managed to sprint to safety from a charging hippopotamus.

The dangerous beast chased the experienced ranger for more than 100 metres before it stopped for a rest at the Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda.

Isn't this pretty much the same as the Norbit trailer's chase scene?

CFP on Leno

That's right kids, my prediction made after the conference finals came true.

Which one was that? (I do make many)

That an Anaheim win would at least give the NHL some TV exposure (the most hockey playoff advertising NBC did the entire playoff run, one may not). Chris f'ing Pronger, Jean Giguere (any idea why people have to announce his entire name? This was the second worst thing about listening to Cole during the finals, the worst being this "Buka-Man" who played defense for the quacks), and Brad May instead appeared with the Cup. I wouldn't be surprised to see Pronger on there someday not answering questions about why he left Edmonton.

Regardless, at the end of the scene, Pronger throws the Tonight Show guy the cup. Were he a knowledgeable hockey fan, he'd throw it back and ask for it to be tested for STDs first.

London 2012 logo

Johnathon Kay at National Post Full Comment has this post up about the London 2012 Olympic logo.

My opinion of the logo is that it looks like somebody took a pane of glass, dropped it, painted an Olympic logo on one of the shards, started to sweep it up, and then just gave up.

Contrast to the plan I had for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic logo:

I picture a homeless guy getting swept under a rug.
And an Alberta taxpayer footing the bill for it.

A milestone has been reached

Crazy perhaps that Colby Cosh is now allowing comments on his blog.

I have succumbed, and posted a comment regarding a famous historical casestudy related to this economics thread.

Roland Garros finals not as nice as they could be, but still damn nice

This is what the upcoming women's singles finals of the Roland Garros Grand Slam event in Paris is going to look like:

v.

Its really a shame, since the semifinals pitted Ivanovic versus this girl:


(Sorry Jelena Jankovic, but Ivanovic is by far the hotter Serb. You still have an amazing ass).

Bonus tennis hotness: The Sexy Maria Sharapova blog (with small misspellings).

69 may be a fun number, but 62 is getting to be nice too

Anaheim 6, Ottawa 2 (I predicted this score yesterday afternoon. You blog readers will never believe me, but my coworkers are angrily aware).

Also yesterday, the Toronto Blue Jays lost their game against Tampa 6-2. Only thing better would be if it was agains the Angels.

People are crying in Ontario today, and I couldn't be happier.


Bonus joke: (I wrote this one on inspiration from a comic at the Battle of California blog)

Q. What do Darth Vader and the Ottawa Senators have in common?

A. When things don't go their way, they both choke.

Global Warming is a serious matter for everybody else

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his predecessor Gro Harlem Brundtland both pride themselves on being environmental advocates. Their credibility fell into question after they used a private jet to get back and forth to a conference in Tromsø aimed at cutting emissions.

It wasn't just a matter of using the private jet so much as it was that there were other scheduled flights to/from the same destinations. That doesn't stop the global warming lies, mind you: the director of the U.N.'s Environmental Agency UNEP claims there was no other way to attend the conference. Sure the average Joe has to schlump around on commuter flights and cabs and trains and rental cars, but the jetsetting global warming climate change fighters aren't the average Joe. Their environmental compassion, if not their environmental action, has landed them big bucks. As the UN's Achim Steiner says, just buy a climate ticket that makes your trip carbon neutral. And if you can't afford a 'climate ticket'? Well, you'd better make serious changes to your lifestyle such as ditching the car, eschewing all air travel, etc. etc. etc. On the bright side, you might be able to get a couple little handouts from the global elite as they pay you a small stipend to not enjoy your own life so they can enjoy theirs. Then again, chances are that the only people the global elite will be sending money to is their own well-heeled friends who run a sham industry of "climate tickets" and "carbon credits".

Mitt and Fred and Rudy and McCain and Huckabee and the rest

Well, I tried watching part of the CNN candidates debate that was on this afternoon, but it wasn't going anywhere so I gave up.

We're all waiting to see if Fred Thompson can still give speeches like he did back when he was a lobbyist, or if he is too used to parroting the lines writers have given him. It remains to be seen.

Also odd, I noticed, was the CNN "regular person" plant in the audience who...oh hey look, lost a child^† in Iraq. Lost a child in Iraq eight days before he was due to return home. I put this in bold primarily because CNN seemed to think it was important: they put it up on screen as a graphic during her question. With 6 month tours of duty (or less, in some cases), 8 days isn't a particularly ironic timeframe. Six months is about 25 weeks (the baseball season, as it happens), so 1/25th of all soldiers likely kick the bucket in the final week or so of their campaign. Even though there have been less than 4000 casualties so far, that still represents 160 guys who would likely have died in Iraq in their last week. It was so laughable, I never did answer the question.

^† Of course, I do read Mark Steyn, and know full well that its a little odd to be referring to guys in their 20s as "children", particularly when I live in a country that declares 14 year old girls to be sexually equivalent of 30 year olds.

Ducks lead 3-1

Well, Anaheim in 5 doesn't quite cover the Senators choking I expected, but its close.

I'm still miffed about all the pro-Sens garbage in Edmonton. I mean, is Comrie forgiven now? Does nobody else, pace Neil Boortz, pay taxes anymore?

Anyways, ironically I'm more here to talk about the faggiest sports news ever, even more so than two golfers falling to injury. Good thing these people don't play hockey!

Anyways, there's such a thing as the "Autism Speaks" race this past weekend, which they had postponed due to rain. That is so homo.

They're sitting in cars, and they can't handle rain? And don't feed me any bullshit about "the track", because do you know who doesn't cancel events due to rain?

Formula One.

Quick, between NASCAR and Formula One, which series features open cockpit-style drivers seats? That's right, Formula One. Which features enclosed hoods and windshields? Why...NASCAR. So naturally its NASCAR that postpones races due to some water falling on the track.

This is why NASCAR, despite its leagues of fans, will never be taken seriously.

Otherwise serious bloggers becoming total teases

Colby Cosh just posted a critique of some media sources today, and one of them is a screenshot from the Edmonton SUN showing two girls sunbathing.

Unfortunately, he cut off all the good bits, leaving us only with the smallest hint of skin from 21 year old Ashley Arsenault and none from fellow 21er Krista Eymundson. Well, I can come to the rescue, and direct you to this link which includes this photo:


Bonus Ashley Arsenault coverage: Another Ashley A. is a teacher at the Academy of Classical Ballet in Moncton NB, and (apparently) another Ashley A. is a Toronto-based producer of music videos.

This isn't a competition, but if it was I'm winning

Colby Cosh has boldy dropped the notepad/FTP combination that made his site unique, and given us a faustian bargain: shitty looking MT/Blogger style blogs like the rest of us, but now he posts more than once a fortnight. (Similar to the Mike Jenkinson faustian bargain: more regular blog postings in return for his being fired from the Edmonton SUN).
Anyways, Cosh has been, as I believe I mentioned, making a big splash in the posting department, not the least of which because one of his recent postings featured a picture of a hot chick (Miss Universe 2007, as it happens).

I can't fall behind with the summer Whyte-ave photography season just around the corner, so I present a stopgap measure. Photos of the hot Women's Tennis stars.

No time/energy for major rankings, so here are a few big names with big...tracts of land:
2005 Newcomer of the Year winner Sania Mirza looks awfully hot in glasses.
2006 Newcomer of the Year winner Agnieszka Radwańska has a hard to write name unless you cut and paste. She's hotter 'cuz she's young, isn't she?
Belarus' Anastasiya Yakimova is cursed with the "amazing body/unappealing face" combo that is so prevalent in women's tennis (all non-hot players except for Venus Williams and the Chinese are like that...maybe Aranxta Sanchez Vicario as a 'so ugly the body can't make up for it' may fall in there as well).
Now cute from top to bottom is a good way to describe Caroline Wozniacki, the Danish sexpot that captured our hearts and...well, we'll leave it at that.
The U.S. has been having trouble of late with attractive tennis players, but Ashley Harkleroad is doing her best to change that. Disturbing, however, is why Google's image searches on her name reveal this picture that at first glance looks way too much like a penis.
They may be cowardly wimps and overbearing poseurs on this planet, but the French do provide us girls like Mathilde Johansson to make up for it.

Finally, a great tennis photo to liven up your day:Andrea Petkovic's perfectly sculpted ass.