Archive for January, 2008

Little book retired

Published January 31, 2008 in blogs and words. 11 Comments

Another little book has reached its last page.

I carry these leather-bound notebooks around everywhere to record mental ephemera of every description.

My little book contains grocery lists, movie recommendations, phone numbers, notes taken from interesting radio documentaries, jokes told to me, music recommendations, books I should (but probably won’t) read, strange thoughts, profound thoughts of others (Einstein, Goethe, Newton, my brother) and words that strike me funny or interesting.

As part of the 100-things meme challenge issued by Bad Tempered Zombie, here are a few of the things I found in my 2007 little book. Long-time GT readers may have seen some of these before.

1. ZomCom - comedy movie with zombies (for you BTZ)

2. Setjetters - people who go places to see where the movie was made.

3. Mancation - holiday for the boys

4. To be Plutoed - to be downgraded or demoted as Pluto was when it ceased to be a proper planet.

5. Euphemism of the year - extraordinary rendition, which is a nice way of saying “outsourcing torture.”

6. Overused words - core values, robust, community, faith

7. Stupid things - Size 0 in Women’s clothing

8. Musical about rock group Queen - Bohemian Crapsody. And it truly was crap. See my review.

9. My brother’s description for skinny girls - “she’s two pounds over organ failure.”

10.My brother’s description of his partner’s grey mini van - the “iron lung”

11. My brother’s observation of Sound of Music Mother Superior’s accent when she is speaking to Maria about her conflict between her vows to the church and her love for Von Trapp: “What is it you can’t face?” sounds like “What is it you cunt face?”

12. Gunt- a hybrid word describing the belly roll below the belt.

13. Toronto 401 freeway lingo - A buck twenty won’t even buy you the middle lane any more.

14. My brother’s partner’s description of someone we know - She can beat the shit out of a junk yard dog and go for lunch afterwords

15. A little joke: A bear walks into a bar and goes up to the bartender:

Bear: “I’ll have a ………………………………….. beer.”

Bartender: “Sure by why the long pause”

16. Description of someone who thinks they are too good: “That’s someone who thinks their shit don’t stink”

17. Another little joke: A duck walks into a bar and asks for a beer

Bartender: How do you want to pay for that?

Duck: Just put it on my bill

18. My brother’s philosophy on a girl’s “girlfriends”: Who needs sistas when you can have gay men.

19. More overused words - dot, freedom, entitlement.

20. Another little joke: A horse goes into a bar and asks the bartender for a drink

Bartender: Sure, but why the long face.

BTZ 100-things count = 20

 

BTZ 100-things total = 35

Am I guilty of a terrible crime?

Published January 29, 2008 in words. 13 Comments

My last batch of cheques got wet during delivery. When they dried out, they puffed up and became all wrinkly.

Now I’m forced to iron out each cheque before sending it off.

Is this money laundering? Will I get busted by Interpol.

Or maybe Interpun, the international organization that monitors bad puns?

Oh, excuse me, I have to run up and double-cheque to make sure I pulled the plug on the iron.

 

Snow, snow, snow

Published January 25, 2008 in Canada. 11 Comments

In January we poor wretches of the north climes spend a lot of time shovelling. And as we we shovel, we have time to meditate. And what do we ponder? Well, snow of course.

Go here for live column. 

Here are a few more types of snow, sent to me by other shovellers who ponder.

1. The “husband had a shoulder replacement therefore I do all the shovelling” snow. This is very closely related to marital-disharmony snow, which always falls when one of the shovellers in the household is not in residence.

2. The “He does the shovelling” snow. Prompts shoveller to dig two wheel ruts into driveway and lumpy path to door. This snow drives Her to distraction because it requires Her to go out and do the job properly.

3. The “She does the shovelling” snow. The driveway is shovelled clean with edges squared off perfectly. This snow makes Him happy because he can sit inside and continue to watch the football game.

When you can’t hibernate in winter…

Published January 23, 2008 in Uncategorized and culture. 13 Comments

I am at heart a hibernating mammal. Between the months of January and April, the instincts in the lower back part of my brain instruct me to do the following

1. Find cave

2. Bed down

3. Sleep for three months, give or take a week depending on the weather.

It’s unfortunate that I seem to live in world not set up for this sort of thing. Obviously this complicates my life enormously. So I must do what successful mammals have always done: evolve.

This winter my strategy is to find a good crop of 2006/7 flicks and curl up in my quasi-hibernation pit in the basement to watch them. I have been trawling newspapers and critics I respect to compile this list. It is in my “little book” which comes out whenever I visit the video store.

(Note: This list is also part of a tag challenge issued by my new best bloggie the Bad Tempered Zombie who has asked me to offer up a list of 100 things about myself. Being a mammal of shallow instincts, I cannot think of 100 things all at once so I will dribble feed over the next few weeks, starting with my flick list.*)

1. Lives of Others - German, Academy-award winning story about life behind the Iron Curtain.

2. This is England - British, Skinhead drama set in Thatcherite England.

3. Son of Rainbow (2008) - British, coming of age flick. Don’t know a lot about it other than there was a bidding war for distribution rights and it is at Sundance Film Fest.

4. Amazing Grace - British, 18th-century drama about William Wilberforce and his quest to abolish slavery in Britain.

5. 4 Months, 2 Weeks, 2 Days - Romanian, about a woman who assists her friend to have an illegal abortion in the 1980s.

6. Into the Wild, American, top student and athlete gives his money to charity and takes a journey to Alaska. Directed by Sean Penn.

7. Juno, American, teenager who becomes pregnant and deals with it. Lots of hype but looks interesting. Actor Ellen Page nominated for Academy award.

8. Atonement, British, liked the book, like Ian MacEwan who wrote the book. World War II (melo?)drama.

9. Beowulf, American, animated film based on old English epic poem, a sort of Anglo-Saxon Indiana Jones. Has Angelina Joli, but otherwise seems interesting.

10. Mataharis, Spanish, Private detective infiltrates the employees at a multinational corporation and confronts the line between what should be public and what should remain private. A comedy that is thought-provoking.

*100 things challenge count = 15

Little House in the Coma

Published January 22, 2008 in CBC Radio and Canada. 11 Comments

Is it just me? Or am I living in Comaville.

International headlines are blaring with dire news of a global sell-off and international market melt-down brought on by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Thousands in the US are losing their houses and thousands more will do so in the next six months. Jobs will be lost forestry, manufacturing and financial services. Credit bombs are going off and money is drying up. There are runs on banks. Canadian banks are vulnerable. Pensions are vulnerable. The R-word looms.

And in my sleepy little part of the world, the local CBC radio station is doing a friendly interview with a mortgage broker pushing the benefits of super-long term 40-year mortgages.

AS IF NONE OF THIS IS HAPPENING?

“It’s every Canadian’s dream to own a home,” the broker says without a hint of irony in his voice. “Longer pay-down periods give Canadians the house they need at prices they can afford. Most people are not concerned with paying down their mortgage. The house value will increase.”

A satirical sketch could not have done this better.

No, no, no it’s got nothing to do with the sub prime troubles they’re having in the US, the mortgage broker says smugly. Here in Canada we’re more conservative. We don’t have sub primes.

Excuse me? Trouble they are having? Has the man looked at the TSX in Toronto? Those losses belong to Canadians with investments in those sub prime mortgages, whether they know it or not.

But it’s the CBC* that holds the bag here. Not only are they NOT interpreting this whole mess for local listeners, they are feeding us the same mortgage-broker junk that got us into this mess in the first place.

To air this interview this morning shows a spectacular lack of judgment on the part of the CBC producers, to say nothing of bad timing.

I’m not into spreading doom. Business and trade go through cycles and this credit crunch won’t last forever. But it is serious, and if the local CBC wants to be taken seriously, it should document this sub prime mortgage crisis credibly. Providing platforms for mortgage brokers to sell bigger houses at lower monthly prices is not a credible way to do this.

Or maybe it is just me. Maybe I’m the one in the coma. Maybe none of this is happening in this little part of the world and it will all just go away. I’d really like to be wrong about this rant. So please tell me I am.

*BTW, I’m a supporter of a strong CBC and of public broadcasting but they do occasionally require a little friendly-fire criticism from their supporters.

“Canadian” is the new N-word in America

Published January 19, 2008 in Canada and words. 20 Comments

The word “Canadian” is now being used as crypto-racist slang, not necessarily against Canadians, but as a veiled slur against blacks.

I first discovered the reference on the Language Log under the post entitled: “No Dogs or Canadians”. The Language Log interprets it as a term emerging from the apparent incongruity: Canada is viewed as the Great White North full of white people of Northern European origin.

A lawyer in Texas blogged about a prosecutor who wrote an email saying there were 3 Canadians on a jury. Obviously Canadians can’t serve on a US jury and it was later discovered that the jury in question had three black people. Here is a snippet from the post entitled O Canada.

The email went out about winning the trial even though they had 3 “Canadians” on the jury. A black prosecutor who was offended and hurt by this email blast, went to the court where the case was tried the next day and pulled the jury list to confirm his suspicion that [the prosecutor] was using “canadian” as a code word for N****r. [The prosecutor] tried to stop the clerk from giving the prosecutor the list, but the clerk, who was black, gave it to him anyway. The 3 jurors referred to by [the prosecutor] were confirmed as being black (ie., Canadians, N****rs, etc). The blk prosecutor confronted [the prosecutor] right then and there man-to-man in private. As [the prosecutor] told his version of the story to people in power, this blk prosecutor was black-balled and is receiving “threats” right now so I cannot disclose his name. Eventually, Joe Owmby [a black senior prosecutor] did some email research on the use of this phrase — that Canadian is the racist code word for N*****, like Australian is the code word for gays — and presented it to Lyn McClellan [a white more-senior prosecutor] to stop the rift. This prosecutor was hurt and alienated by the powers that be in the office and had to quit to find a peaceful work environment.

CincyBlurg, a Canadian in Cincinnati, also blogged on this and attracted comments confirming the use. The term also appears on something called the Racial Slur Data Base which defines Canadian as “Blacks - Used as a masked replacement for ‘N*****.’”

We know that racism is alive and well, but now, apparently, it hides under the cover of otherwise respectable words. Veiled racist slang is not only hurtful and representative of the bigger problem of bigotry and prejudice, it is also slippery and harder to identify.

While Canadians should be offended their name is being used to propagate racism, they should recognize that the slur seems to be racial, not nationalistic. As for those it is directed towards, it represents a new challenge in the ugly battle of racism.

I have avoided writing out the “N-word” so as not to get picked up by Google for all the wrong reasons.

Snow: there’s more than just one kind

Published January 18, 2008 in slack woman. 9 Comments

See live column here.

If you live in the northern part of the eastern seaboard of North America, you will know that storms can be very indecisive. They seem to wring their hands in despair over whether they should be a wet or powdery or a blizzard, or freezing rain.

Because they can never make up their mind, they often dump a little bit of everything on you. So in the interest of helping you identify these different forms of indecisive snow, I’ve listed them.

Follow column link for a description of, among others:

marital-disharmony snow

put-your-back-out snow

groin-injury snow

must-invite-my-neighbour-with-the-snowblower-over-for-a-drink snow.

Gag-me-with-a-combine-harvester words of 2007

Published January 16, 2008 in words. 14 Comments

Since we’re having fun with lists, here is a list of the worst cliches of 2007.

These are the overused and distorted beyond all recognition words that fall out of the mouths of talking heads who to fill up air time on TV news shows, you know, to help us understand the world around us at this hour.

It was sent by GT commentator Hunt & Peck from this website. I’ve taken the words and put my own spin on them. Try not to be sick on yourself. Thanks H&P.

PERFECT STORM – a descriptive overused and distorted beyond all recognition. Was the name of a book that talked about really bad weather that sunk a boat. Now used by those who want to sound literary and probably don’t know about the book, and possibly, have never read a book.

WEBINAR – A seminar distributed on the web. The prospect of going to a seminar is bad enough, but who in their right mind would ever want to attend a webinar? The word if as painful sounding as it is pretentious.

WATERBOARDING – makes torture techniques sounds like fun at the beach.

ORGANIC – word used to make things sound natural, fuzzy and green. Organic corporate growth in the chemical industry. Yeah right.

POST 9/11 – Our post-9/11 world. Overused justifier to make the reduction of civil liberties sound inevitable and pleasing.

‘BLANK’ is the new ‘BLANK’ or ‘X’ is the new ‘Y’ – Brown is the new black; black is the new red; red is the new yellow; yellow is the new brown and you’re right back to where you started. And going in circles.

RANDOM – Popular with teenagers in many places. That’s OK. They’re teenagers, but if you’re over 25, avoid it as it will make you sound like the 25-year old loser who refused to leave high school because the “babes just keep getting younger.”

SWEET – Also popular with teens, but too many sweets make you to vomit.

POP – the creation of make-up artists. This colour makes your eyes pop. Yes, and so does sticking a needle in them.

IT IS WHAT IT IS – just say tautology. It’s more fun and people just might think you have an IQ bigger than your shoe size.

Old words; new meanings

Published January 15, 2008 in words. 13 Comments

Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. This was sent in by GT commentator Dick. Thanks.

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

10 reasons why NS should stop harassing Letterman

Published January 14, 2008 in CBC Radio and culture. 8 Comments

Not to spoil the fun, but the party’s over, people.

The local CBC radio station launched a 10-Reasons-to-get-Letterman-to-Nova Scotia contest after local gal Ellen Page appeared on his show. It was all sort of fun until the politicos and branding people hopped on board. Then things started to get embarrassing.

Premier MacDodo pitched a YouTube video listing his top ten reasons to get Letterman to Nova Scotia. Then he showed the funny man of New York City how the Premier of Nova Scotia can fiddle and step dance - at the same time.

Mercifully, Letterman’s people politely declined the invitation. But no is apparently not enough and the campaign continues. The local CBC station is sending a care package and another plea for Letterman to visit.

Enough. Stop. They’ve said no. Call it a day, folks.

Sadly, I’m left with no choice but to give GT’s 10 reasons Premier MacDodo, the CBC and Nova Scotia should Leave Letterman alone now:

10. He said no. Presumably no means no in Letterman Land.

9. Saying you’d like to visit Nova Scotia while interviewing local gal Ellen Page and actually planning to visit the place aren’t necessarily the same thing. He was drawing out his charming interviewee by talking about her hometown and saying he’d like to visit. People do this all the time in conversation.

8. Telling Letterman that you can have a free triple-bypass in Nova Scotia (as Premier MacDodo did in his YouTube pitch) is a rather tasteless cheap shot to throw a quadruple bypass recipient from a country that does not enjoy the benefit of free health care.

7. Telling Letterman the triple-bypass is free in Nova Scotia is also a wrong-headed pitch as an American would not be entitled to free health care in Canada.

6. Nova Scotia hospitality was cited as a top reason Letterman should visit on CBC’s contest. The announcement of the winning entry was followed this morning by a story on the diabolical scandal of Nova Scotia taking $100,000 from immigrants who enrolled in the failed business mentorship program. Most of these people got no such training and were left out to hang dry by the Nova Scotia politicians who have been ducking and diving ever since. Some immigrants managed to get their money back but many haven’t. Is this Nova Scotia hospitality? No, it’s incompetence by Premier MacDodo and his band of Dodos.

5. Premier MacDodo says it’s 30 minutes to the sea anywhere in Nova Scotia, 35 in traffic. Clearly MacDodo has never sat on the Bedford Highway in rush hour traffic when it takes an hour to get from one part of the city to another.

4. Premier MacDodo thinks Letterman would get a laugh out of the sign to “Shag” Harbour. Hmmm, given his track record in the “Shag” Harbour department, perhaps he ought to leave well enough alone.

3. Trying to woo Letterman with stories of a love-struck moose in Cape Breton is a similarly injudicious pitch given stories of another Love-struck moose from Cape Breton.

2. Premier MacDodo’s attempt to one-up Huckabee makes him look like a Wannbe.

And the number 1 reason why NS should stop pestering Letterman:

1. Letterman is funny, witty and smart. Nova Scotia’s premier MacDodo is none of these things and having the funny man meet the dull-witted man would be excruciatingly embarrassing for the province.

Christmas in the Cotswolds

Published January 13, 2008 in beauty, photos and travels. 9 Comments

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A cloudy day burst into flame at the very end as the sun dropped below of line of cloud, casting orange, red and pink hues across the underside of the cloud. These shots were taken in Warwickshire in the Cotswolds, a range of hills in Central England. This is where I spent Christmas.

The colours in the sky were changing before my eyes as the sun sank to the horizon. In one shot, you can see the light shooting sideways across the top of the hedgerows and in another a puddle gives the distinct impression of a ghost.

The low light at the end of December is a photographer’s dream and in a spectacular landscape like the Cotswolds, the beauty is intensified. And to think I almost didn’t brother with the good camera and the good wide angle lens.

flickr back up again

Published January 13, 2008 in photos. 0 Comments

Yeah!

Flickr is down…

Published January 13, 2008 in photos. 0 Comments

…thus no pictures in the margin or on slide shows. According to the Flickr blog, they should be back up tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Indie productions bode well for CBC

Published January 12, 2008 in CBC Radio, Canada and culture. 3 Comments

Good news. Terry O’Reilly is back on the public airwaves with his excellent radio program Age of Persuasion. This is the third season for A of P which airs on CBC Radio 1 Saturdays 11:30-noon.

A of P explores the power and techniques of media, public relations and advertising in culture and politics. The shows are cleverly produced, fun and very informative.

Interestingly, A of P is not a CBC production, but an indie production by Pirate Radio for CBC. This indie feel is evident in the sound and style which is decidedly not CBC-house style.

This indie model is used by BBC radio for much of it’s radio documentary, drama and humour programming. These programs are second to none.

The indie-production model was a major battle ground during the last CBC strike with CBC staff protecting in-house production and CBC management promoting the use of more independent productions.

If O’Reilly’s Age of Persuasion is an example of how this model can work, then bring on more indie production for public radio, I say. It’s good use of tax dollars and it treats the CBC listener to excellent content on their public airwaves.

Weekly column: Down with Them

Published January 11, 2008 in Uncategorized. 14 Comments

Go here for live column.

You know Them. And They.

They say this. And we listen to Them because They know.

  • They say drink eight cups of water per day.
  • You’ll ruin your eyes by reading in dim light, according to Them.
  • They say your fingernails keep growing even after you’ve expired.

Well guess what. They are wrong. It turns out that many of the things They say are myths.

We don’t even know who They are. Yet we go around believing Them. We’re like big dumb sheep. We repeat what They say. We think we are right because They said so.

And then They turn out to wrong. And where are They now that they’re wrong. Nowhere to be seen.

They are a big scam. Down with Them