Clair de looney

Author's note: Reposted to this blog on February 14, 2018.

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You know you live in Canada when you receive these instructions from your physical therapist:

Lie on your back with your knees bent. Inhale to prepare, exhale to activate core and activate gluts as if balancing a looney between buttock cheeks.

For those not in the know (and why would you be?), the looneye ("loonie"?) is the $1 Canadian coin, so named because the reverse side features a common loon floating on the surface of a lake.

Like so:

You sometimes even hear the $2 coin (there are no $1 or $2 paper bills in Canada anymore) referred to as a "twooney." ("Twoonie"?)

Or perhaps someone was just playing me for a loon.

When in Ancient Greece . . .

"The Statue of Socrates at the
Academy of Athens. Work of
Leonidas Drosis (d. 1880)"
by C. Messier, 7 February 2016.
CC BY-SA 4.0.

Author's note: Reposted to this blog on February 14, 2018.

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Hipster ghetto superstars, that is what we are.

If beard length and fullness coupled with a preponderance of ethnically vague, sloppily stitched boho clothing were signs of wisdom and knowledge, my Toronto neighborhood would be known as Little Ancient Greece.

And oddly enough, it's on the East Side, well south of Cabbagetown, even south of Cabbagetown South. Just imagine if we were in the epicenter of Toronto hipsterdom (generally West Side, from what I can tell). We'd be known as Little Genesis/Big Bang/Creation Story Heights.

To serve clam

Author's note: Phallic clams--a perfect topic for Valentine's Day. Reposted to this blog on February 14, 2018.

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And the hard-hitting Canadian news keeps on . . . erm . . . comin' . . . .

I can't decide which is the more unsettling aspect of this article from CBC News--

That there is a "phallic clam" inhabiting the waters off the British Columbia coast. Wasn't enough that feet kept washing ashore--now we have to worry about penises?!

That they served said clam to the Royal couple, Will and Kate (pardon me, William and Katherine), on their recent visit to Western Canada.

That the clam's name is pronounced "gooey-duck."

That the Vancouver Aquarium has an executive chef.

Actually, I think it's the latter that is the more worrisome. No matter how you, uh, slice it, there's just something unseemly about creating recipes from the creatures you're committed to helping survive. It's like that old episode of The Twilight Zone, "To Serve Man."



Watch out Nemo and Dory, it's a cookbook!

Appropriate that a Canadian actor, Lloyd Bochner, is on the menu.

You know you live in Canada when . . .

Author's note: Reposted to this blog on February 11, 2018.

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. . . one of the local supermarket chains (Sobey's) is promoting the serving of "game day poutine" for the Superbowl.

Better idea: Skip the football game, keep your regurgitated nachos, and just pass me a steaming plate of French fries, brown gravy, and cheese curds, better known as the snack food of the Gods, also known as poutine.

Which is Quebecois French for "kiss my maple-flavoured buttocks, gringo." At least that's what it says in the citizenship prep test booklet.

The Dead Rodent Society

From the Weather Network Canada, 29 January 2016.
See the full article here.

Author's note: Republished to this blog on February 10, 2018.

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Newsflash from the Weather Network Canada: Canadian groundhog, Winnipeg Willow, does a runner days before Groundhog Day.

Sometimes even I don't have the words.

Although when I posted this to Facebook recently, many a friend did have the words.

My favorite was, "So how's that socialized medicine working for you now, rodent?!" from my friend B.I.

Nonetheless, there were other pithy remarks about how at least in Pennsylvania they knew enough to have a "strategic groundhog reserve" of three or more of the buggers in case Punxsutawney Phil decided to make a break for that great pile of chucked wood in the sky at an inopportune moment.

I could draw some unfavorable comparison between Canadian and American understandings of show business, but let's be charitable on this marmotous momentous occasion. After all, Willow found out that the shadow she saw was death.

We are all weeping and woeful for Winnipeg Willow.

Woah.