Canada remembers: Who shot J. R. Ewing?

From the Canadian tabloid 24 Hours (Toronto)

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

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Canada remembers who shot J.R. Ewing in 1980.

However, it doesn't remember that J.R. was seriously wounded, not actually killed in 1980.

Sigh.

I can see Canada from my house

"Palin while visiting Ketchikan during her gubernatorial
campaign in 2006" by Bob Weinstein. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.

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

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I'm seeing buzz on Twitter this morning that Sarah Palin may be nominated as United States ambassador to Canada.

As the kids might say, 😲

Or maybe, 😳

Or maybe, 🙄

Or maybe we're all just laughing our tuques off.

A few quick observations--

• What did Canada ever do to hurt the U.S. so badly? Yes, some Canadians could earn an Olympic medal in patting themselves on the back, being self-satisfied about their nation and their lives compared to their American cousins. But is that any reason to inflict Sarah Palin on them--or anyone? I mean, if the Trump administration is so interested in torture, might I suggest letting Sarah set up her own Abu Graib-like black ops re-education center somewhere outside of Kotzebue?

• So much for the northern escape route. You thought you could treat Canada once again as your safety school (thank you, Stephen Colbert, for that observation) and flee Trump's America by trying to emigrate to Canada--without having a real sense of how to do it or how difficult it is to do. 

But the best way to do that is to vote--and not vote conservative, right wing, alt-right, Republican, or Jill Stein.

• Tut, tut, really, there's nothing to worry about: Sarah's sled dogs will turn on her and eat her alive before she gets as far as Dawson City.

Or she'll quit midway through her term.

Either way, problem solved.

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A silver lining?

Canada, like most Western nations, has concerns about low birthrate, an aging population, and how to maintain societal viability under such circumstances--and immigration, especially immigration that favors young families, is one way to address that.  

(Editor's note: As I have discovered in my efforts to apply for permanent residency in Canada, one gets zero points for being over 50, single, and childless. This means that even with a work permit, a master's degree, a lengthy professional record, fluency in English and some competency in French, not to mention a well-paying job, I still just barely score high enough to be considered by using the Citizenship and Immigration Canada online analysis tool. But such is life.)

But if Bristol Palin joins Sarah in Ottawa and continues to promote abstinence-only sex education in Canada--all the while caring for her two children born without benefit of marriage--the Canadian birthrate will sky rocket!

Cross-border diplomacy achieved--and problem solved again.

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.