Gifted Typist

I spotted these tulips in late spring. They were growing at the entrance of my city’s lovely Victorian Public Gardens.
A few shots from below and a bit whiz-bam-bang with Photoshop and the Victorian charm is transformed into the 21st-century funky.

Exactly five years ago tonight, we encountered Hurricane Juan.
With sustained winds of 160km/hour (with gusts of 180km/hour), it ripped up trees, took out the power and phones for anywhere from 5 days to two weeks, damaged houses and property, and it scared the Dickens out of us.
Two people died in that storm. And three more [...]

When a musical legend comes to town, you go for more than just the music. You go to be reunited with your past.
Sir Elton John is one of those legends. His songs make up part of who we are. They remind us of our friends, our common experiences, where we came from. And there’s nothing [...]

See my Herald column here.
In Canada, we have our own version of truthiness. It’s called falsiness.
Falsiness is when a Conservative prime minister says he’s going to make US-style fixed-date elections in this country. And we all think it’s a great idea because it removes political self-interest from the process of setting an election date.
Then the [...]

Great.
That’ll have ‘em beatin’ a path to my blog.
“Wow! Look!” I can hear you all saying. “GT’s rated PG! That’s racy. Let’s get over there right away.”
The site scans your site and looks for naughty words etc.
The offending words on my blog were
* zombie (3x)
* hell (2x)
* steal (1x)
We wouldn’t want kids under [...]

That was my situation for the first couple weeks of September.
Canada Post decided that my house and the house next door were vacant, and started sending back all my mail.
Yup, letters, bills, cheques – all sent back, informing senders I no longer live here.
I work out of my house and depend on Canada Post for [...]

Isn’t that a bit early?
Sept. 20 is still officially summer, innit?
But I swear I saw this on the front door of a house as I walked to Blockbuster with one of the little typists.
And do you know what was in the window of the house next door to the house with the pumpkin?
Christmas decorations.
On Sept. [...]

See my Herald column here.
The USA has Sarah Palin. They also have Obama. Rock and roll candidates, in other words.
Canada on the other hand (yes there is a federal election here too!) has the Canadian charisma triplets – Curly Harper, Larry Dion and Moe Layton.
Canadian elections are boring. Canadian politicians lack charisma. Their groomers file [...]

Having sabotaged the telemarketing company that called me during work hours the other day – I lied through my teeth to mess them up real good – I have stumbled upon more such strategies to screw the in-coming telemarketers.
1. When they call at home or at work say this: ‘Hold On, Please…’
Put the phone down [...]

Last week ex-Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist David Gilmore put the boots to my dream of ever seeing the band live in concert when he announced that there would be no re-union tour.
And yesterday, Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright sealed the deal.
He was 65.
Wright was a founding member of one of GT’s all time fave bands, [...]

I told a couple of little white lies today.
It was in a telephone survey promising me a free cruise* to the Bahamas in exchange for answering  questions using the my keypad.
There wasn’t a real person there. Just an automated recording.
So lying was easy.
In fact, is it a really a lie when when you tell it [...]

Buy yourself a generator.
See my Herald column here.
How do you guarantee a winter without snow?
Buy yourself a snow blower.
Rather than thinking of these purchases as solutions to the problems for which they are designed, think of them as ways to avoid the problem in the first place.
Trust me, it works.
Just go out any buy one [...]

It’s the world’s biggest machine with a tunnel 27 km (17 miles) long.
It’s buried beneath the earth under the French Swiss border.
It cost $8 billion to construct and it’s the most sophisticated scientific experiment ever designed.
They fired up the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland yesterday.
Inside this tunnel, they’re bashing the hell out of a bunch [...]

Elections are supposed to be an exercise in the will of the people.
But in Canada, elections are apparently an exercise in the will of the politicians and Big Media.
In poll after poll, the people of Canada have said that the environment is a top priority, yet the pro-environment Green Party has been refused a place [...]

Because that’s what I’m in at the moment.
PTD. And I need meds.
Living in this little finger stuck off the Eastern seaboard of the North American continent, we catch the remnants of these terrible hurricanes that are pummelling the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and southern USA.
Since the beginning of August we’ve been in the swirl of [...]