ELgiN StreEt iRReguLars

Clement: "Ignore anyone who says I have porked!"

2012-01-23T15:40:00.000-05:00

Tony C. Repeatedly busted for inane utterances in defense of a whole string of dodgy, ideology-driven government doofinesses, and porking on the public dime. Again, today, from the looks of it. Yet still fighting a valiant rearguard action against anything resembling reality. Ya gotta admire his sheer, pigheaded tenacity. It's as if he's trying to hypnotize an entire country into not seeing what's as plain as the nose on your face...

The face of classical federalism

2012-01-19T09:40:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed the term, "classical federalism" starting to spark up serious mouth-flappin' among the chattering classes. Us coyotes have sensitive sharp schnozzes, and their collective, wonkish halitosis has certainly caught our reluctant attention. Our reluctant peevish attention. It's cold out, dammit! Can't a doggy wrap his fuzzy-ass tail around his sensitive sharp schnozz, doze, and ignore them jerks 'til spring? I digress. Shocking, I know.

Anyway, prime ministerial academic mentor/frenemy/apologist-in-chief Tom Flannagan started shilling it hard again a couple of days ago. There's pushback from other wonks, but it likely won't scuff, let alone dent, the near-fatal lack of self-doubt that afflicts the minds of just about everybody from the Calgary School of political thought.

What Flannagan likes, the PM likes. And neither of 'em really very much seems to like Canada as it stands. Both of 'em really want to fix that li'l problem, so that they - and few others - will finally be able to stand the place.

You know. Turn off the taps for stuff they don't like: standardized national health care, all of that wimpy-ass social advocacy crap, cooperative domestic policy, informed foreign policy, peacekeeping, any actual research that debunks their long-held fantasies of what is Right and Proper.

And turn 'em on for the stuff over which current ReformaTories do become highly-aroused: inappropriate (read: big-ass, yet unsuited to Canadian needs) new fighter jets that deliver far less than promised; legislation demanding a "more robust" (read: big-ass) penitentiary system conveniently not paid for by the feds; a "more robust" (read: big-ass) military that can be sent against anybody of the PM disapproves, based, apparently on his dyspeptic gut feeling; pumped-up military jingoism swathed in drag as popular culture, anon anon anon.

Things, in other words, that drive a federation in a far less cooperative, more mean-spirited direction. In the Canadian context, this type of federalism is not so much "classical" as "radical".* But spray-painting it "classical", lends it a thin, flakey, spurious coat of historical precedent - an attempt to pickpocket a little gravitas, highly, deceptively convenient to those who shill it. Much like a low-buck quickie paint job, meant to blind one to the deep mechanical faults of a seriously crappy automobile being curbsided by an ummm, slightly less than ethical used-car hawker.

Go figure.

* Unlike certain natural resources ministers, we're far too classy to allege without solid evidence that they are, in fact, foreign-funded. But they sure seem un-Canadian to us... heh.

Foreign interests

2012-01-17T09:57:00.002-05:00

Last week, the federal natural resources minister, Joe Oliver, came out all rabid attack-doggy on "radical foreign elements" set on infiltrating and hijacking the Northern Gateway pipeline hearings to bring up environmental issues. Some kafuffle, huh?

Northern Gateway would be, if you've had your head buried in the, ummm, sands, these last weeks, a really big pipe for pumping great wads of sludge from the Athabasca tar sands, through some of BC's most pristine remaining wilderness to the west coast, where megatankers (...none, we hope, named Exxon Valdez...) would bug out for China with it.

It's the government's, ummm, better alternative to the now-shelved Keystone XL project, another big-jeezuz pipeline that was designed to pump that self-same sludge through some of Nebraska's most pristine wilderness, and thence to the refineries of Texas et.al. Are you starting to see a theme? And what could possibly go wrong?

Yesterday, in another vaguely-fawning Peter Mansbridge interview, the PM appeared to cool the hot oil cauldrons. Although we should remember that: A) This is a guy who's all about appearance over reality; and: B) He'd have to have approved Oliver's frothy yappin' in the first place. There's a definite strategic messaging advantage in that kind of thing: He looks about as reasonable as he's capable of of - which ain't very - as he sweetly opines that "Canada shouldn't be one giant national park for the northern half of North America."

This is pretty much standard operating procedure. The Prime Minister's Office tells the useful idiots on the back benches and in the ministers' thrones to say the really dumb/incendiary crap, so he can later look prime ministerial while he pours heavy oil on troubled waters.

The troubled waters in this case, though, are in the Athabasca River. As an Alberta doggy, I can vouch for its beauty if you ever get that far north. Not to mention the Beaufort Sea, where it empties. You know. The Arctic Ocean. Where, notwithstanding all those, well-enforced environmental regulations, increasing masses of escaping toxic aromatics seem likely to eventually ooze from the giant settling ponds surrounding a growing bunch of heavy oil mines - pretty much owned by, ummm, foreign elements.

One is China. Judging by the monumentally appalling way that country's government treats its own environment in the name of economic gain, I don't imagine they'd give a rat's ass about screwing up Canada - good - to feed their own strategic oil wants. Ditto the U.S. of A.

If Joe Oliver thinks I'm some kind of dangerous radical for considering that environmental concerns deserve a serious airing in any discussion of the tar sands, let him. He's kind of heavily biased. And kind of wrong. In his own way as much as a fossil as the animals from which all that evil-smelling goo in Athabasca came from. Hey! Maybe he's so defensive about the tar sands because he's related!

Way I see it, Canada being one giant national park may indeed be dreaming in technicolour. But it shouldn't be one giant black national toxic waste dump, either.

Mister Sloppy wishes you all a Joyous HannuKwanzaChristmas...

2011-12-23T12:12:00.001-05:00

Mister Sloppy has asked me to convey to you a heartfelt "Merry Christmas!" Given his extensive ~~rap sheet~~, ummm, history (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), we can only suggest that this sort of unbidden friendliness on his part suggests - strongly - that if you are anyone who carries a wallet, you should check your pants. Just to, ummm, confirm that said wallet is still in 'em.

Now that I consider that advice further, you should probably check your pants anyway. Just to confirm that you are still in 'em...

Mister Sloppy is that good.

Merry Christmas, everybody. And a happy New Year. May your holiday season be pantsful and free of evil-genius larceny. Unless, of course, you're into that.

Not just Il, but dead...

2011-12-19T15:16:00.006-05:00

I know we're not supposed to speak, ummm, Il of the dead. Heh.

But i felt kind of inspired. So, here you go. I wasted untold minutes on this. It was very therapeutic.

Now, if you need me, I'll be in the fallout shelter...

Ottawahenge or Ottawagate?

2011-12-13T19:16:00.003-05:00

Here's something odd...

On November 30, Trevor Pritchard over at Ottawa.openfile announced a photo contest for photos of the sun setting on Sparks Street to be taken between then and December 5. The prize for the winner would be $75 and a featured spot on their blog.

Early on December 5, Pritchard announced the contest deadline would be extended to December 9 because of cloudy weather.

Later on December 5, our own Coyote posted a photo of the sun setting on Sparks Street taken that day titled "A line runs through it". Coyote's photo shows no clouds in the sky and also shows no other photographers stationed on Sparks Street poised to capture the magic moment.

On December 12, Pritchard announced the deadline would be further extended to midnight on Jan. 13, 2012 because the weather has blanketed the downtown with overcast skies for most of the past two weeks but the sun will be back to setting in the perfect position on January 10.

Pritchard says Openfile has "a desperate need to give away $75", but I wonder how desperate they really are.

We all know Coyote won't actually take the money because it would mean revealing personal information like where he does his banking. But he'd love the attention.

Paging Councillor Bubbles

2011-12-02T18:19:00.002-05:00

From the Agenda for next week’s meeting of the City of Ottawa’s Transportation Committee:

COUNCILLORS’ ITEMS

Councillor Tierney

5. ABANDONED SHOPPING CARTS ON CITY PROPERTY - MOTION

CITY WIDE

WHEREAS shopping carts from malls create a hazard and an eyesore when taken off store property and left on City property; and

WHEREAS, there have been numerous reports to 3-1-1 and Councillor’s offices in this regard resulting in the City spending countless hours and resources returning shopping carts to their respective stores; and

WHEREAS the Municipality of Mississauga currently has an existing Shopping Cart By-Law which the City of Ottawa could reference as a template;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Transportation Committee direct staff to prepare a report for Q1 2012 to examine the costs and benefits of the City establishing a program to retrieve store carts from City property, including the option to bring them to the closest City yard for storage until such time as the respective store owner claims and picks up the carts, and establish a fee for the release of the carts to help offset the costs of the program.

Peter MacKay, still? Oh, what the heck...

2011-12-02T09:50:00.006-05:00

Gregg: "Artifice is the kryptonite of public life..."

2011-11-28T08:26:00.005-05:00

"We may all have the right to our opinions but we do not have the right to our own facts..."

More about that here in today's Great Gray Globe...

Ottawa - the place to run to

2011-11-24T20:58:00.004-05:00

Great news for tourism in Ottawa today. Richard Lee McNair, formerly one of the top 15 fugitives wanted by US Marshalls, has praised Ottawa as one of the best places to be when on the run. [Citizen: American fugitive fell in love with Ottawa, new book reveals]

This is great news because the City can really use a new tourist demographic. We've cornered the regional market for grade eight students doing the annual tour of Parliament and visit to the Museum of Science and Technology, but let's face it, junior high school enrollment is not increasing.

Meanwhile, with the upcoming passage of the Omnibus Crime Bill and its mandatory minimum sentences, we should be seeing a huge upswing in fugitives from justice.

I'm wondering about attractions we can hold out for them. McNair rode the O-train, toured Carleton U, strolled Dow's Lake and the Rideau Canal and went for early morning jogs. It doesn't seem like museums and government buildings were a draw for him.

Any thoughts on what features of our fair town we can advertise or develop further to bolster this new tourist cohort?

[Update: I'm afraid news like this is not going to help.]

Peter Kent: Lost in the Ozone

2011-11-22T07:48:00.008-05:00

Here I was, duct tape wadded round my snout to bung yet another frothy yowl on the political class. Although. Truthfully, dignifyin' 'em with the epithet "class" twists the facts awful hard. Screw it. Twisting fact has become their standard operating procedure.

Ergo I rant. Bear with me.

Back in Alberta, even now, remain fans of a last-century band of psychedelic rockabilly space cowboys called Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen.

They're an acquired taste. And perhaps better known for other songs. But us coyotes wish to dedicate Lost in the Ozone Again to alleged federal environment minister Peter Kent.

Who didn't seem to be an idiot back when he read the news on TV. Shows what half-assed-decent research and scripting departments can do for a guy... and, whoopsy, there's my tradmark digression. Blink and ya miss it.

As a news person, Kent was about getting facts right. Now that he's federal environment minister, and so a front-row sock-puppet for the Stephen Harper Information Torquing machine, not so much.

Pete is lately pinned in the high beams of an expert advisor's memo that, ummm, pretty much negates his excuse for axing half of Environment Canada's critical ozone monitoring system. He says both parts are the same, so he'll cut one. Since Kent has so far not proven that he even knows what the hell ozone* is, this does not comfort. Especially since the actual, ummm, expert, is adamant there's no duplication: both form halves of a coherent whole.

Coherent? Can't have that! Whenever Harper Government spin faceplants against reality, the first instinct is to kill it, and the messenger, to remove any threat to his beeyootiful conservative ideomythology. It's Statistics Canada and the long form census all over again. Harperites don't seem to care how bush-league lame they look while they put the boots into reality. And citizens. And really, the whole planet.

* For the science-illiterate among our federal ministers, ozone is a type of oxygen molecule in the high atmosphere, that reflects a whole lot of the ultraviolet rays in raw sunlight. Which prevents people and other living things from suffering multiple horrible cancers whilst frying and dying from solar radiation. At least on my planet...

Ode to beavers

2011-10-28T13:15:00.016-04:00

Who could ever forget the Elgin Street Irregulars' historic, heady foray into the (very likely lucrative, if we'd ever actually winched our notoriously incoherent act together...) BeaverBalls™ biz?

Yup, we've long reserved a warm spot for Castor canadensis and his charming, if strange, habits. Such as (allegedly) eating his own testicles when threatened.

So, it is with a certain, ummm, proprietorial disdain that we tee off to trash conservatory senator Nicole Eaton's (ev)ill-conceived proposal to replace Our Illustrious National Rodent with some polar bear.

If beavers were ever to actually chew off their own business to spit at somebody, they might wish to begin with Ms. Eaton.

Her cover story is that the Beav is a "dentally defective rat". We need barely slow down to point out that slagging rats places her in the position of badmouthing many sitting members of her party, before hitting the gas to note that the more plausible reason for her libel of our furry pal is that, while he's claimed squatters' rights to the national identity for centuries, he was only officially installed in 1975. Under, you guessed it, Pierre Trudeau's Liberals.

It takes no genius to see that the focus of the Harper Government™®© since gaining its coveted strong stable majority™®© ain't so much the stupid economy as tearing down, stomping, burning, shooting and pissing on any and all things liberal. And calling it nation building. ™®©.

So despite the senator's cutesy persiflage, we can, ummm, probably agree that this is one more case of these guys' systematic scorched-liberal policy, as they try to replace all those inconvenient decades of collective national memory with (yet more) crap, artfully spin-doctored from the whole cloth.

Do I have to stoop to quoting literary classics, like some intellectually-bankrupt Ottawa Citizen columnist? Yes? Crap. Okay:

"If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

You already know the book. Oh, never mind. I digress

Base image: Wikimedia Commons

Try to occupy this

2011-10-17T07:39:00.016-04:00

Most mainstream news media (and current perversions thereof... but dear me, I digress...) can't seem to wrap their collective consciousness around Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.

As OWS went globally local this past weekend, they're finally trying to get to it — but news TV's hair and teeth types continue to deride and whinge over what they see as Occupy's deal breaker: no focused definition, agenda, leader or spokesperson.

Thing is, media and other big-organization complaints are more about fossilized reporting conventions than Occupy's relevance.

See, sometime mid-late last century, many media honchos and theorist types actually fretted about balancing news coverage (so quaint!) in the screaming dive toward daily deadlines. The only way they saw to do that real fast was to pigeonhole every story into a prefab template. One US network news president famously wanted to stereotype every item as a black hat/white hat Old West shootout. Somewhat more thoughtful types — well, okay, media theorists* — felt you might run to maybe a half-dozen prefabs. Still amounts to fillin' blanks with dates, names, a few telling details. Voila! News story! Like any sausage machine, it works adequately as long as you don't get all hung up on finesse.

But to get names and telling details in nanoseconds, which is all anybody on a 24 hour news cycle budgets for anymore, ya gotta have easily-contacted traditional organizations with official spokesthingies, cued to bark out bullet-point "positions" in predigested clips.

It's why many news items are tiny, dumb cartoons. It's also why many are spun to hell by the groups that can pour money into blendering up self-serving bullet points like ~~so much liquid pig shit~~ tasty frozen martinis and firehosing 'em at reporters.

So, the major objectors to Occupy Wall Street's style: people in news who want fast chicken nuggets to slot into a standard story; and people and groups holding some traditional form of power, who seek potshot targets with which to neutralize — or better yet, blacken and bury — a movement and retake what they see as the agenda. To occupy Occupy, as it were.

I'm pretty sure that OWS' amorphous squishiness is as frustrating to old media as its very tangible if unfocused discontent is to business-as-usual forms of power. This rabble ain't so easily cartooned or contained, when you can't find rabble-rousers or messages to pinpoint bomb. Could explain why Occupiers are covering their own revolution rather well in diffuse outlets like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook anonanon. Unhindered by convention, they get it. Anti-antisocial media at its best!

Coyote News, though we sometimes fly with the turkey vultures, is cool with it. Because it really, really pisses off political types desperately seeking some easy in, to either smear or co-opt the whole thing. And our ~~embarrassing, illegitimate~~ cousins at Fox and Sun, ummm, News. Did we mention them? Kinda flailing at the whole discrediting thing. Snicker...

* You, my doggybloggy reader, are of course so interested in this stuff that you will read further, maybe something like Making News (Gaye Tuchman); Deciding What's News (Theodore Gans), or Discovering the News (Michael Schudson). Because you're not the type to take your entire daily news/info/bloggossity hit on a smartphone in that two-minute lineup for your latte. You're better than the mere latte-rati...

In the blood.

2011-10-12T07:13:00.013-04:00

Repeating a Harper Majority Government (™,®,but especially ©...) mantra that already glitters with either the polish of hard wear or that sparkly Twilight vampire crap, the federal anti-labour minister has ordered Air Canada's flight attendants' union straight to a procedurally-sketchy Industrial Relations Board arbitration tomorrow. Do Not Strike. Do Not Pass Go. Definitely Do Not Collect $200.

She opines (again) that these people must not be allowed to hurt the economy. Probably better than when she opined that "cancer is sexy," huh?

"These people" took a 15 per cent pay cut back in the day when Air Canada was hurting, and are still starting out at a monthly wage that barely covers a so-so one-bedroom apartment in downtown Ottawa, never mind the food and utilities. Forget cable. Even basic.

But, hey! If you could afford that hookup, the new retrosoap Pan Am's success would prove that the job's glamour still totally makes up for the poverty, obscene shifts, and antediluvian management. Right?

Apparently it's okay for these people to hurt, as long as "the economy", usually limned as some kind of shadowy, all-powerful, yet strangely fragile third person, does not. This quasi-person must be protected with the kind of dumb, short-term union-shafting tactics that, down the line, inevitably will lead to bunch of (here's an economic term, for, ummm, trained economists...) pent-up demand. From labour.

It has apparently not yet dawned on too many Harper Majority Government (™,®,but especially ©...) types that the economy is made up of individuals. Like, say, flight attendants. And that if you pull this shit enough, they'll eventually get pissed enough to come back at ya.

About the first time Lisa Raitt started dropping legislative howitzer rounds on any union that even smelled like it might be thinking about a strike, she began to tell interviewers that she grew up in an old-school union family in Nova Scotia, that her affinity with labour was "in the blood".

Was it really only this past June that she could still pull that one straight-faced? At the time, the great grey Glob said she was "an awkward foil for critics portraying the Conservative government as an enemy of Canada’s labour movement."

To establish that article's background (and to launch my now-trademark digression, a full nine paragraphs late in my books...) one must note that its top photo is of Ms. Raitt, sportin' what looks, to my jaundiced yellow eye, suspiciously like a blue sweater, and, ummm, cuddling an expedient kitten.

In retrospect, that should have been the only tell that we really needed, to give context to her poker-faced claims to blue-collar cred...

The struggle continues

2011-10-02T12:36:00.006-04:00

This week, there's a new tear in the fabric of downtown Ottawa.

Zoom writes about it here. I don't have anything to add to that very fine obituary, except to think that Elmaks, of Swap Box Ottawa fame, deserves to be recognized one more time in our blog space, as well as Zoom's. And in a lot more places as well.

RIP, Elmaks. Thank you. The struggle continues... and the rest of us will remember you well.

Peter MacKay...

2011-09-29T13:44:00.008-04:00

...Never a man to back away from a Challenger...

Hero worship

2011-09-21T07:36:00.013-04:00

Autumn overtakes us coyotes with all the wit and subtlety of a drunken buncha city cowboys shooting varmints from the box of a careening half-ton. So, it seems, do the ripening fruits of the Cons' comfortable federal majority.

In the flush of their win (A flush that'll rattle through Canada's sclerotic political plumbing until something inevitably breaks... I digress), they've wasted no time ticking off citizens who didn't vote for 'em and items on their long-deferred bucket list: dusting and re-hanging old queen portraits at Foreign Affairs (Minister John Baird is apparently a fan of queens. We have no information if he's a fan of foreign affairs. The evidence is murky. And I've just digressed a second time in one paragraph.) Pushing an overreaching bill to throw money the country doesn't have at crime that doesn't exist. Hiring $90,000-a-day consultants to tell them how to save money. (Now they admit they don't actually know how...?) And oh, hey, doing their level best to rehabilitate John Diefenbaker.

F'rinstance by renaming icebreakers and public buildings, most lately Ottawa's old city hall, now a satellite office of Foreign Affairs, which for decades has lived up the block in the blasphemously-named Pearson building. For the kids who haven't blown us off for Twitter yet, Pearson was a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a diplomat as well as a liberal PM. Diefenbaker's diplomatic coups seem to have been confined to alternately boring and pissing off John F. Kennedy.

Yet vast mittsful of latter day ReformaTories have declared John Diefenbaker their personal hero. I suspect because they were in utero or in diapers in his heyday, so have no personal experience of the jowly old coot. They do not recall why his own embarrassed party belatedly kidney-punched him, kicking and screaming, into extended care.

Certain six-thousand-year-old coyotes were around. And we can tell you. He was a mean-spirited partisan, a quivering, glittering-eyed paranoid whose idea of a really great joke was to verbally acid-wash non-conservatives. His grip on reality was sweaty and tenuous. Many of his policies were logical looneytunes. Long after his best-by, he soldiered on in Parliament, resurrecting petty gripes best left in history's dustbin and hallucinating happier endings for himself.

Oh, ummm, wait... Sigh.

I'm the kind of guy who makes Google poems

2011-09-17T11:27:00.003-04:00

* I'm the kind of guy who thinks fotos made by fotografers might want to mean something.

* I'm the kind of guy who can say in 100 words what most say in twelve. By choice.

* I'm the kind of guy who likes to ask a lot of people questions for reviews and do my own research before I buy something so I know that I'm getting a quality product.

* I'm the kind of guy that knows the names of the store clerks where I stop and get my daily morning Diet Coke; I'm the kind of guy who will let you in front of me in traffic or in line at the store

* The itching is horrible, but I'm the kind of guy who doesn't seek medical treatment right away. It's not a macho thing.

* Look, I'm the kind of guy who loves to ridicule blatant Monster Hunter rip-offs.

* You have to remember, I'm the kind of guy who has to look that up.

* I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, “Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?

* I'm the kind of guy who strongly believes in doing what you're passionate about to make money.

* I'm the kind of guy who just goes out and tries to catch as much as I can every day and make as much money as I can in every event, and then I sit back and see how that hand plays out.

* I'm the kind of guy who visits a gallery or museum and can't understand the people who see things in art. I just see it as art.

* I would tell you to just stop reading and listen to it, but I'm the kind of guy who likes to keep that sort of thing to myself..

* I'm the kind of guy who likes to take responsibility and I like the pressure.

* Like I said before, I'm the kind of guy who goes about my business and not try to think
about things like that or things that are out of my control too much.

* I'm the kind of guy who says things sometimes just to make myself laugh, but she would just catch me making jokes for me.

* I'm the kind of guy who does a lot of self-expression on my laptop

* I'm the kind of guy who takes pictures of himself.

* I'm the kind of guy who's constantly trying to improve myself by reading up on whatever I can.

* I'm the kind of guy who likes to have my hands in the nitty-gritty and keeping stealthy until having things really, really ready, but I recently reached the point where I realized that I needed to flip the coin and get out of the office

* I'm the kind of guy who… Will wake up to kill a mosquito in the middle of the night, but won't wake up and open the door for someone ringing the doorbell in the morning.

* I'm the kind of guy who fixes stuff only when it stops working, or when its broken.

* On the other hand, I'm the kind of guy who changes my devices every year

[source]

Phoning it in

2011-09-08T14:22:00.013-04:00

For about six-odd millenia, human behaviour has more or less baffled us semimythical coyotes.

It is September. A neoconservative prime minister has his, ummm, fully transparent mitts, fully wrapped around the sooty levers of federal power, manipulatin' dog-knows-what with 'em. Summer's green leaves are beginning to turn colour. And perhaps most foreboding of all, our medicinal dark chocolate stash is damn near empty. We are necessarily forced toward the philosophical. You know -- cogitatin' on the big unanswerable questions.

Take the ever-thinner smartphone. Now so impossibly thin that it cannot spoil the drape of that summerweight silk Italian suit or Chanel shift that every smartphone owner wears. Because you can afford to own those, even after you sign your soul over to Satan, who administers all of the more serious phone data plans. I digress. Oopsy.

Nude, the latest devices would dance comfortably beneath a ten millimetre high limbo bar. Ummm, so, basically, so thin and delicate that many of the fone phashionistas (at least the ones on the Route 14 bus...) feel an urgent need to wrap their statusy, ever-so-svelte electronic fetishes in even fetishier stretchy rubber slipcases. Roots' f'rinstance, clocks in at three millimetres.

Since most of these elegant devices apparently now barely power themselves through an average working day before collapsing in an anorexic puddle of melted lithium ions somewhere just slightly south of your early afternoon Starbux break, would not that extra three millimetres you're gonna add to the thing anyway not be better dedicated to, say, battery space? Just askin'.

And I've also been lately pondering: why lately am I so attracted to the comfort of hot soup? And if I and my similarly disgraceful friends make off to a Chinatown eatery to demolish huge bowls of soup, are we guilty of wonton destruction?

Just askin' the big questions... it's what us coyotes do right now.

(Flickr image by Quosquos, licensed under Creative Commons)

Probably only coincidence

2011-08-31T07:43:00.011-04:00

Inquiring coyotes can't help noticing how carefully all the government news releases, media stories and pundits have been pussyfooting around the suspicious confluence of today's two great television events: the fact that August 31, 2011 is the, ummm, drop-dead date stamped upon not only the Great Digitul Switchover, but CTV News anchor Lloyd Robertson's retirement from the 'lectronical firmament.

Both huge! Both televisiony! Has nobody but me connected the two? Even though they hover blatantly in front of us like giant hi-def bats, everybody is carefully pretending they aren't in the room.

(In related news, coyotes are mourning the loss of analog rabbit ears. Digital ones are practically inedible. I digress. Ahem.)

Anyway, it's probably nothing for torch-carrying global villagers across the nation to worry about. However. An ever more parchment-complexioned Lloyd has been calling late night TV bingo for so unnaturally long that even people that don't believe in the undead, openly call him "Count Floyd" to his face now.

So those of us attuned to the semimythical realms, while not feeling certain about this one (Call it a theory. Like economics. I digress again.) suspect pretty strongly that vampires, whom everyone knows cannot be seen in mirrors, may also be incapable of manifesting themselves on digital TV. So, perfect time to retire.

Ummm. Probably only coincidence. But I'm just sayin'...

No bull

2011-08-25T11:45:00.012-04:00

As Ottawa's festival season winds down once again, we coyotes feel a gnawing emptiness. A summer of nonstop-festivals-up-the-wazoo is about to be displaced by another cold winter of festless discontent.

But hey! For reasons that may or may not become clear if you click this link, the Irregulars' hit counter has lately been roping in mucho action from Google Image searches for "testy festy pictures".

Since coyotes are ever curious - you could ask all the cats we've ever known just how curious, if any through sheer inadvertent carelessness remain unboiled - I naturally researched this oddity. You could too, the same way. I ain't linking up to all that NSFW WTFery here. We're a family blog. A really dysfunctional family. I digress.

Let us merely state that Montana's Testicle Festival, known among the glitterati as Testy Festy, features a whole lotta breaded deep-fried prairie oysters, and a whole lotta (on the photographic evidence, apparently also deep-fried...) participants scarfing the aforementioned and behaving, ummm, somewhat badly. I figure it's probably excess testosterone.

But hey! I also figure this kind of thing is just what Ottawa needs - worse-than-usual bad behaviour to light that long, dark tunnel between the end of this weekend's Ottawa Folkfest and 2012 Winterlude, sometime far, far in the frozen future!

Vigil

2011-08-22T21:29:00.009-04:00

This morning, Canadian opposition leader Jack Layton died of cancer.

Many people will write more eloquently about this than I. Some already have.

But I'll add this: Layton was a human guy in less than humane times. He was clear that politics affects peoples' lives. He knew that good policy has to be good for everybody.

And somehow, even in his goodbye note to a nation, he remembered that we all need hope, love and optimism, and tried his best to pass them to us.

Hundreds came to the candlelight vigil honouring his memory on Parliament Hill tonight, and considered their candles, or the red maple leaf flag that billowed at half-staff on the Peace Tower, or the sky, or the eternal flame.

And at intervals, they sang, quietly yet firmly, O Canada. For Jack Layton, for themselves, for a nation. Some throats caught. Some eyes wept. There were long, thoughtful stares. Still, the song kept rising and rippling through the crowd like a current in still water. Down deep, some, I hope, were thinking about ways to change the world for the better...

Whatever you do, don't skip this Google Poem

2011-07-26T22:17:00.000-04:00

don't touch his hat

* Whatever You Do, Don't Buy Dermasis.
* Whatever You Do, Don't Show Him The Queen of Hearts.
* Whatever You Do, Don't Call Them Fuddy-Duddies.
* Whatever you do don't do other people's thinking for them.
* And whatever you do, don't try lugging in any nacelles to your local scrap dealer.

* Whatever you do, don't ignore it.
* Whatever you do, don't over-schedule the kids. Everyone needs some downtime.
* But whatever you do, don't get on meds. Those things are REALLY bad for you!
* And whatever you do, don't sit on the sidelines, waiting for a massive drop in prices. It isn't coming.
* whatever you do,don't eat take out/fast food,the stuff is toxic garbage.

* Don't touch his hat, whatever you do, don't touch his hat.

* Whatever you do, don't wait till the last minute to drive to your appointment or you'll pile additional stress on yourself by having to rush.
* Whatever you do, don't lower it.
* Whatever you do, don't forget to put the accurate information for contacting you.
* Whatever you do, don't be one of those people who give their parents a generic wedding gift put some thought into it, make it memorable, and don't wait to the last minute!

* Whatever you do, don't use a string trimmer, which will send sap-oozing bits of plant flying — some undoubtedly landing on bare skin.I
* So, if you like them, eat some apples and bananas and lettuce and make a splendid salad, but whatever you do - don't start your day with a banana!

* Whatever You Do Don't Relax!
* Whatever you do, don't take the staircase that leads up to the rooftop deck. It's haunted.
* Whatever You Do, Don't Stay In Your Lane.
* Oh … and whatever you do … don't forget to leave a comment below!

* Whatever you do, don't forget to thank your asian zodiac that bamboo is making a serious statement for those looking for a modern-day wooden look.
* Whatever you do, don't make an altimatum that you are not fully prepared to follow through with.
* You may say this goes without saying, but whatever you do, don't say anything bad or derogatory about the attendees or anyone or anything while on the webinar, even if you think you've hit mute or it's not on.

* whatever you do, don't ask for the ketchup unless, that is, you like plenty of attention.
* Everyone stay inside and crank the A/C! Whatever you do, don't learn how to cope with extreme weather without the help of central air!
* whatever you do, don't give the photos to a newspaper

* Whatever you do, don't waste that space.

* whatever you do, don't look down at Jennifer Aniston's feet. They are horrible. Really horrible. It's like a dead person's feet have been attached to her.

* And whatever you do, don't stop your child from eating because 'it's almost time for dinner.'
* Whatever you do, don't forget to take advantage of this time.

* whatever you do don't put the blame on you.. blame it on the rain yeah yeah. ...

[source]

There goes the neighbourhood

2011-07-23T11:32:00.001-04:00

Elgin and Nepean

Photo: D'Arcy McDonell

Why the Harper Government®©™ can't ban asbestos...

2011-06-30T08:29:00.004-04:00

Canada Post: still packin' mojo

2011-06-22T12:17:00.009-04:00

Yup. When you're a crown corporation with a business model that is:

aging less than gracefully;
getting whacked mercilessly by the intertubes;
stumbling toward long-term decline;
hated by current government with an ideo-illogic verging on insanity;

and the only ploy management can come up with to fend off discussing a pressing, problematic pension issue with striking unions is to lock 'em out and make a bald-faced, unsubtle, shamelessly opportunistic play for some of that anti-union back-to-work legislation just like Air Canada got...

...Nuthin' says "We're totally ready to face all that down and get on with the whole 21st century thing" like, ummm, repainting all the mailboxes...

Still here, still semimythical, still ornery

2011-06-16T07:52:00.011-04:00

Oh, I know some figured us semimythical coyotes to stump off into a semimythical western sunset to die of disappointment after that last election. But nooooooooo. We've been proud pests for the past six millennia, and with luck will keep at it for another six or twelve. We're ornery that way. (Insert trademark "I digress" here - Ed.)

In the post-election-seek-the-silver-lining pall, pundit types speculated that maybe a Tory majority rule would usher in a new era of political civility, now that the PM was comfortable - and so, more reasonable.

Mmmmhmmm. Maybe if you consider his long-gnawed-at ambition to try to root his (many) unpalatable ideas into the national ethos like so much psychic bindweed "reasonable". Maybe if you think authoritarian autocrats with a mile-wide muley streak are likely to do less of what they were doing when they were less... comfortable.

When he brayed "conservative values are Canadian values" to his caucus at the beginning of June, editorialists took it to mean that he was reassuring the two-thirds of the electorate who kinda didn't vote for him that they had nothing to fear.

Coyotes, suspicious critters to a dog, figured it was probably just laying pipe to marginalise anyone opposed to Harper-brand tories by calling 'em "unCanadian".

The new cash collection started at last week's self-congratulaTory convention, to fund a whackdown of their only "real" opposition - "left-leaning media" - kinda ices the poisoned gâteau. Lessee: National Post, Globe & Mail, PostMedia News, Quebecor/Stun chain... they all endorsed these guys. Some held their noses over that piffling, albeit unprecedented, contempt-of-Parliament ruling from the Speaker, perhaps the better to apply 'em to Mr. Harper's butt. Butt they did it.

(I note that that other piffling, albeit unprecedented, thing, the post-election report from the Auditor General that Harper knowingly misled parliament so a couple cabinet ministers could mishandle a whole whack of millions as a personal re-election slushfund for the, ummm, honorable member from Muskoka, was handled identically: a carefully calculated, casual, very public shrug, to reassure the party's dim base that their guys weren't exactly the same kind of utterly amoral, opportunistic, rats as the ones they hoofed out a few prorogued parliaments back...)

Damn digressions! Where the hell was I? Oh, yeah. So, I'm thinkin' that means that the only left-leaning media, ummmm, left in this town is Coyote News. These crosshairs feel stylish. Like making a Nixon enemies list. I should be able to dine out on this one for the next four years at least...

Tips for Criminal Masterminds: the Secret Lair

2011-05-30T18:08:00.001-04:00

As a criminal mastermind you need more than a hideout. You need a base of operations suitable for developing your nefarious plans to take over the world.

The Diefenbunker - too obvious?

Here in Ottawa there are many properties that will require very little retrofitting to meet your needs. Most are not currently on the market, but as an evil genius, you should be able to overcome that challenge.

The great news is that you'll be able to tour many sites without suspicion this coming Saturday and Sunday as part of Doors Open Ottawa.

Of course, you'll want to see the Diefenbunker. It is closed on Saturday, but open on Sunday. In my opinion, the Diefenbunker is too obvious a location for a secret lair, but you're the evil genius.

There are a good number of embassies on the list as well as churches and schools that could meet your needs. Lisgar Collegiate used to have a rifle range on its 4th floor.

Traffic Operations - inspiration?

Even if you don't want to acquire one of the Doors Open properties, you might get some good ideas. For example, the City's Traffic Operations Unit at 175 Loretta Ave has control and monitoring systems you might like to study.

There is one possibly ideal location not on the Doors Open list we expect to be up for sale in the next few months. It's only a block from Parliament Hill and has escalators going up and down to a large basement. I'm talking about the Zellers at 156 Sparks. It's one of the few Zellers outlets that have not been bought by Target.

Your new lair?

If I were a criminal mastermind, I'd snap this Zellers up as soon as it comes on the market and keep it a low price retail store. Not just for the income stream, but also so that my minions could come and go without notice and I could buy their uniforms wholesale.

The light rail tunnel construction starting soon would also cover up the noise and waste from any excavation I wanted to do for extra sub-basements or my own secret tunnels.

Good luck wherever you decide to locate your lair. Feel free to invite us to the house warming party. We'll be sure to bring a suitably evil houseplant.

Tips for Criminal Masterminds: Skill Building

2011-05-17T20:37:00.000-04:00

Not quite ready to take over the world? Perhaps you need to strengthen a few skills or develop some new abilities. The City of Ottawa offers a number of low cost programs that can help you.

There are many suitable offerings in the Spring – Summer 2011 Recreation Guide. Here is a small selection from the adult program:

Public Speaking
Improve public speaking with practical tools including breathing techniques and voice work. Build confidence addressing a group in a supportive environment. Skills help in various professional settings.
Nepean Creative Arts Centre – 613-596-5783
Fri 6:30-7:30 pm
Apr 8-May 13 $61.25 645286

Chivalrous Sword Handling
Sword fighting? You mean like Lord of the Rings? Train in the safe handling and fair usage of the European Broad Sword.
Instruction includes parts and history of the sword, shield work, code of Chivalry and how to make chain-maille armour.
Plant R.C. – 613-232-3000
Level 1
Sun 10:30 am-12:30 pm
Jul 10-Aug 28 $90.25 635205

Hypnosis – Basic Techniques
Hypnosis is a tool to communicate with the subconscious. Learn how to achieve a deep sense of relaxation and assist with habits and goals with the guidance of a certified hypnotherapist.
St-Laurent Complex – 613-742-6767
Wed 6-8:55 pm
May 25 $68 636776
Jun 15 $68 636778
Jul 13 $68 636781
Aug 3 $68 636784
Aug 24 $68 636786

The City also has a program to prepare your children to become better henchmen for you:

Spy Camp
Hone your craft, meet ‘real spies’, and run training missions through top-secret briefings and activities. Develop a disguise, make and break codes, use escape and evasion techniques, create spy gadgets, and uncover the science in spying.
Pinecrest R.C. – 613-828-3118
6-8 yrs Tue-Fri 9 am-4 pm
Aug 2-5 $132 644569

FAQ
Q: Are there other courses I should consider?
A: Absolutely, if you haven’t worked your way up to Ballroom Dance Level 10, get on it right away. And if you have not mastered an obscure musical instrument you can start with piano lessons. The piano is not an ideal instrument for an evil genius, but learning it will help you learn how to play the pipe organ.

Q: Should I sign up for one of the dog obedience courses?
A: What? The only dogs an evil genius should have are attack dogs managed by a professional trainer. If you’re looking for pets, it’s cats or reptiles.

Q: Until my plans come to fruition, I’m a little tight on funds. Any way to get a break on registration fees?
A: Of course. Just apply to the Fee Assistance Program.

Never Trust a Google Poem

2011-05-15T20:37:00.000-04:00

* Never Trust a Hippy
* Never trust a cricketer, whoever he may be
* Never Trust A Junkie

* Never trust your solder joints
* Never Trust a Man in Crocs
* Never trust a millionaire quoting the sermon on the mount
* never trust an attractive woman that you meet in a dungeon

* Never trust the media guys who tell you to “go ahead and leave your mic on”
* You Should Never Trust Someone Whom You Don't Know To Take a Decent Picture
* you should never just trust a review

* Never Trust a Scrawny Foodie
* Never trust an international guarantee
* Never trust a CEO with your personal well-being
* Never trust a cloud!

* Never Trust Your GPS.
* Never Trust the Internet to Always Be Your Friend
* Never trust Google Maps when walking!

* never trust a fart no matter what.

* Never trust your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
* Never Trust A Jawa
* Never, NEVER trust your form inputs.
* You Should Never Trust The Photos Hotels Post Online

* Never trust downloads even if it is from a respected official download site because it might still be a threat
* Never Trust a Politician
* Never trust a warlock

* Never trust a fart. I had a rather unfortunate experience after tonight's 10 mile run.

* Never Trust An SEO Salesman
* Never Trust Anything With That Much Wicker Around
* Never trust a man who wears a sweater vest
* Never trust a big butt and a smile

[*]

You've been warned

2011-05-11T13:58:00.000-04:00

Barking up the Big E-Bike Ban

2011-05-05T09:11:00.017-04:00

Yesterday, the National Capital Commission moved to ban E-bikes -- at least honkin' big ones -- from recreational paths. Public consultations, fines for perps, and everythin'.

Don't get me wrong. I love e-rides. One of the biggest hoots I've had in the past year was hijacking somebody's robo-mower for an exhilarating l'il motocross through Greely. Hilarity with a minimal carbon footprint! I digress.

Normally, us coyotes see the NCC's double-mittsful of planners as, ummm, Double-Bureaucratic Twits. Like many bureaucrats and planners, removed from the real world. Except by about times two. Maybe squared. More likely cubed.

But on the Big E-Bike Ban, I'm gonna go all Randall Denley on ya, and agree with the twits, maybe actually be one myself. I reluctantly concede that they might get it right by accident. Sometimes.

The cycles in the NCC's crosshairs are the ones that look and act pretty much like full-fledged motor scooters.

Dealers of these things say they're being targetted unfairly. And kinda ignore the fact that like their gas-snorting kin, they're plenty heavy and drive at city traffic speeds. Sure, e-scooters sport pedals, but they're evolutionary vestigial tails -- near-fictional afterthoughts to skootch owners past motor scooter license laws on a technicality. Honest owners will admit their spiffy e-rides are way too heavy for such sweaty nonsense.

I mostly blame bicycle brain. Cyclists that think they're not on real vehicles, and so are not subject to real road rules.

Bicycle brainiacs do all sortsa crap. Elbowing walkers on sidewalks, blowing off stop signs and red lights with that cute li'l semicircular sidestreet deke that abets the private fiction that they haven't done anything illegal or dangerous. On recreational paths, bicycle brain causes 'em to barely nod to the, ummm, strong suggestion to ring their bells when they're overtaking unaware pedestrians in speedy silence. Even if there are only a thousand or so in the city right now, calling what amount to full-on scooters that weigh a couple hundred pounds and go 50 or 60 kph, "bicycles" and letting 'em loose on recreational paths is just askin' for disjointed tails. Or worse. And I know from disjointed tails.

So just this once I tip my semi-mythical hat to the bureaucratic twits. Bask in your coyote kudos! We know it can't last...

At long last having pulled out a majority. . .

2011-05-03T06:21:00.008-04:00

. . .Stephen Harper revealed his grand vision for the country to Canadians

Vote...

2011-05-01T15:45:00.009-04:00

Parked as we are atop a few clawed mittsful of cute, furry food chains, us coyotes got no illusions that life is guaranteed to be fair. Or to make sense.

Still, with the ballot countdown now in the hours, I gotta raise a fuzzy eyebrow at Stephen Harper's last shot of gall and wormwood-twisty logic: commanding lefties to vote for him, or, ummmm, dangerous lefties will screw up the stable government that only he can give us.

From his gang's performance to date, I think it must be the kind of stable that needs regular shoveling out.

Con strategists, as in previous kicks at that increasingly dented can full of majority, were counting on their voter base being the only one motivated enough to show. Everybody else was supposed to feel so disheartened and discouraged by the gutter politics of late that they just blew off the balloting. If you didn't vote tomorrow, then they'd win.

That clever script's obviously had an emergency rewrite. And semimythical coyotes -- uncharacteristically -- have little to say about that, except this:

If Liberals vote Conservative to stave off the NDP... then the Toryists win.

Greasy pols, greasy polls and greasy poles

2011-04-28T07:47:00.011-04:00

An election now lunges toward either the final gong or buzzer, I forget which, with a speed approaching terminal gravitational acceleration. Certain half-smart tory backroom operators who helped manipulate the damn thing in the first place have hit the ground. Not running gracefully, as they thought they would, but with aerodynamic qualities akin to lead pancakes.

It is telling that Stephen Harper has stomped on (m)any faces in his scramble for a majority. It is also telling, in a negative way, that he hasn't really told anybody what he would do with a majority if he got it.

But it is even more telling that some opinion polls place those unhinged socialists he keeps harpering on about, within hard spitballing range of "his" majority.

Citizenship fatigue, finally, maybe? Five years ago, in the face of a decayed liberal machine, Harper promised Reform-a-Tory honesty and transparency if elected. Since, he and his stable of hyper-partisan frat boys have ridden a breathtaking string of dishonesty, opacity and mean-spiritedness to where we are now.

Their fallback strategy when nailed - and there have been nailings aplenty - has been to wriggle, split hairs and misdirect. Say they're only doing what the Liberals did already. Maybe throw someone who's not named Harper under the bus.

That pristine Tory bus is gettin' pretty gory.

Then, if your name is Harper, you feign an eerily robotic approximation of calm reason to state, "Now, now, you know that's simply not true."

Provable lies, but they play real well with the rural base in Alberta. Also, apparently, with the Globe and Mail, which just endorsed the crud-covered incumbent as the best choice for PM. Because he's you know, a good financial manager. Yucko! As if!

Where was I? Oh yeah: so the reductio ad absurdem Con subtext is that they are now exactly what the Libs were, right? The devil's spawn of which their endless barrage of attack ads do constantly remind?

Seems like the copious backsplatter from all that ugly ordnance may finally be soiling the tailored blue Harry Rosen suits of the firing crews. One can hope.

This election ain't a done deal. What we seem to be learning as the campaign closes is that liberals are still wandering the political wasteland, and that conservatives have emulated them, badly. Could explain the surge of a former fourth-place long shot who seems pretty upbeat and positive.

How it'll play at the real polls, as opposed to the fleeting snapshots of opinion polls, is anybody's guess.

If it's a Tory majority, I still have my doggy helmet, flack jacket and poisoned ink supply from Ontario's Mike Harris years. Anything else, that yodelling, yipping laugh you hear in the distant night after the ballot count will be moi.

Meantime, I'll stock in the English breakfast tea and a crumpy or six for a big, very early-morning wedding. I approve of weddings. They're a welcome diversion. And more important than politics.

Oar not...

2011-04-17T21:58:00.018-04:00

It's unclear at the moment, what with different sources touting vastly different he-said-she-said versions of the story on Sunday. But it seems at least likely that the reason the incumbent minority PM is so certain that those costly new stealth fighter planes he's set his heart on would cost ludicrously less, by at least half, than the figures that every other financial and military authority other than the PM and the Department of National Defence has come up with, is because they're ummm, gliders.

But us coyotes can see the, ummm, logic. Yeah. That's it. Logic. Because this solves everything. All the haters who've pointed out that our
economically-trained PM has never actually practiced economics - nor, apparently, economy of any kind - look like losers this time.

Because ordering motorless planes saves a veritable billions-and-billions bundle on up-front costs and downline engine maintenance. And it'll put the Canadian military at the tippy-top forefront of those petroleum conservation and low carbon footprint thingies. Just what the country needs to counterbalance that plethora of negative tar sands environmental impacts, I'm sure. Not to mention how much stealthier they'll be than everybody else's stealth fighters, if they don't make any noise.

How to make 'em go, then? Look no further than Canada's proud and ancient voyageur tradition, people! Just borrow the Olympic rowing team's supply of high-tech carbon fibre oars (to match the high-tech carbon fibre wings, y'unnerstand...) and paddle them suckers! Using penitentiary prisoners as galley slaves would, without a Tory doubt, save huge bucks on the big prison-building schema, too!

All done within budget, just like those prudent, conservative fiscal managers said they would! Problem solved! Mission accomplished! Where have I heard that line before? Never mind! How could I have ever doubted?

Stockholm Syndrome

2011-04-13T10:02:00.009-04:00

Well, since today's Ottawa Stun's screaming front page compares Michael Ignatief to Chairman Mao for mentioning, ummm, flowers in last night's debate - 'cuz we all know only Alberta-tarsands-hatin' godless commies like flowers - it's time to bring the smaller, feistier, crazier counterpropaganda machine we know as Coyote News back outta mothballs. Excuse the smell.

It may also be time to point out that godless Chinese commies have invested in a multibillion-dollar gooey black glop of the tar sands themselves. I'm unsure of the implications for godless communism, neocon theology or the filthy strip mine formerly known as the northern half of Wild Rose Country (oops). But I imagine I'm the only one so confused. Everybody else seems sure of their facts, however specious. I also imagine I digress again. Excuse the smell.

Over at Knitnut today, Zoom is wondering how people can bring themselves to vote for Stephen Harper. She ain't the only one. Poll after poll since the election began has depicted conservative approval ratings floating airily above the rest, into something not far off majority territory. Harper's contempt for parliament and, really, anybody who isn't Stephen Harper, as well as numerous scandals; issues of, ummm, human resources in the backroom; and criminal and procedural slams, all seem to slide off his hunched, oily back like so much heavy crude...

I blame Stockholm Syndrome. Hence my whacked-out counterpoint to today's calculated Stun Mao inhibitor: five years ago, a neocon terrorist kidnapped this country and held it hostage. He and his terrorist crew began doing everything they could to degrade the country's existing reputation and institutions.

Initially, most citizens were appalled. But after five years of abusive, coercive brainwashing, the hostages started feeling sympathetic for that poor Mr. Harper. Everybody throwing up roadblocks in his way, every time he tried to do the least reasonable little thing. Read that last sentence any way ya want.

Even the pundits started to say "Look. He's changed. He's become so much more reasonable". Well, except for that pesky prorogation thing. And that pesky stonewalling thing. And that pesky information control thing. And those pesky "throw all the executive assistants under the bus when their ministers get caught with their mitts in either flagrante delicto, the cookie jar, the pork barrel, the office supplies, or the back door of the institute for lame statistical reasoning" things. Depending on the day.

Yeah, well. History has proved the pundits pretty much wrong about Brian Mulroney's wonderfulness, too.

Harper hasn't changed. He spent much of last evening's debate holding his usual face in a flabby rictus determined by his PR handlers to resemble, as closely as possible, Dopey the Dwarf. (Sorry, Fourth Dude. I know the Dopester is a relation...)

They determined that it made him look innocuous and reasonable. Zoom, whom I respect much more, determined that he actually looked scary. Good instinct, that. Keep Stockholm Syndrome in mind, and go with it...

The (completely) unreliable narrative

2011-04-11T07:48:00.020-04:00

It used to be that unreliable narratives were a device of true artists. Such as, say, Joseph Conrad, considered still to be a master of the novel.

Us semimythical coyotes have gained a certain smaller, more folklore-ish rep as unreliable narrators in prairie cultures with storytelling traditions. I admit we may tend to fudge ummm, small details in the interests of extending a good shaggy dog narrative. In this ramshackle blog's salad days, we had quite a snappy repartee on the roles of unreliable narrators. Begun, if memory serves, by our departed Muse.

But dissembling doggies got nuthin' on the current crop of political operators. As a cog in the unreliable narrator biz, I feel increasingly insulted by their rapid-fire repeater talking points as they attempt to, quote, "seize the narrative". These guys don't give a beaver's butt (or posterior of another rodent of your choice. Porcupine's patoot? I digress...) about the all-important kernel of truth any more. Every good fiction needs it. Yet sucking deeply from the pressurized cylinders of rarified weirdness inside their bubble/hothouse/echo-chamber/whatever, the minority ruling party has convinced itself that voters won't notice it's tossed truth aside completely.

Tasting power has made 'em kinda hallucinaTory. Sad really. I'm supposed to be the critter with the loose grip on reality.

I think the blatant, repeated fibbage bears on the current much-discussed-and-lamented election malaise, particularly in the under-35 cohort. Can't blame 'em. Being born in the path of a relentless tsunami of consumer advertising has made 'em awesome bullshit detectors. Faced with an eternal flush of overspun, overwhelming effluent, of which politics has become a pathological subset, most put the shields up and pointedly slope off to higher, drier ground.

Awhile back, some amoral backroom operator decided they no longer needed to pay lipservice even to the tiny grain of truth that good fictions rely upon. Because just making crap up "works". Well, yeah. For a while. Crudely. But blowing off an entire rising generation is a spectacularly shortsighted tactic for democracy and the nation as a whole.

Neocon backrooms harbour teams of strategists, spin doctors and writers whom I imagine are considered in their small, specialized circles to be "artists" at what they do. By the logic they themselves surely would write into Stephen Harper or John Baird's or Tony Clement's briefing books if they'd thought of it, that makes 'em, ummm... con artists. Ba-da-bomp. Rimshot.

If you're a wanna-be government whose much-vaunted base seems to be a bunch of pissed off old poops, and you're running out of time to nail down a majority before they die, and you're on a self-assigned mission to change the ethos of an entire country against its will, it makes a Pyrrhic kind of sense to lie your way into power. And at what cost to the rest of us?

* * * Update * * *

Oh, and? When you finally do see fit to artistically insert a kernel of truth in your narrative? Make sure it matches the matter at hand.
Pro-tip: Do not screw with one of Canada's most trusted - and feisty - Parliamentary officers...

I'll Drive up Front with the Boys, Steve

2011-04-05T23:33:00.008-04:00

This piece of political theatrics just made me laugh. From what I can see, there is plenty of room for more than one in the back seats. But, then again, when one gets the chance to drive with real firemen why not "ride" up front than with hubby. Maybe there is something to those rumors I keep hearing around town.

Stirring the election pot. And licking it.

2011-03-31T07:26:00.009-04:00

Grandad coyote was an austere guy. The sort of dog one would associate with a large framed portrait frowning severely down on a big, lustrous boardroom table surrounded by overstuffed chairs gliding on discrete casters. A portrait of the sort one might, indeed, associate with the founder of a well-established semimythical enterprise.

I know it may surprise some of you who have noted my, ummm, occasional case of pottymouth, but Grandad very much discouraged expletives of the anglo-saxon monosyllabic sort. Well, what the hell else do you call it when your breath sometimes betrays a swig or two from the occasional toilet? I digress.

I understand this credo had something to do with a long-ago day when the world was very young, when he and his callow young littermates holed up in a culvert, smoked way too many green hayseed cigarettes rolled in pages from yellowback novels, and uttered every filthy word any of 'em could think up. Family history offers no clues as to why they considered this plan sound in the first place. I blame youth. Nowadays, I imagine they'd all drink Red Bull until they ran in confused circles and peed down their own legs while hacking WiFi signals, or something.

Anyway, by the end of the day, they all felt so nauseated they swore off (heh...) swearing for life. Come to that, I don't think any of 'em smoked, either. Score one for proto aversion therapy. Oops... another digression.

Anyway. When severely riled, Grandad would admit to "having my dander up". Someone of whose conduct he generally disapproved, he might allow, was "a so-and-so". Truly egregious types, he called "stinkers". For one totally beyond the pale, he reserved the terrifying term "Dirty Potlicker".

You did not want to be someone whom Grandad called a Dirty Potlicker.

I am uncertain to this day of the true etymological origins of this prairie epithet, but the tone with which he uttered it told me all I need to know. Oh, I've seen attempts to define it (1) (2), but I'm pretty sure, on the evidence, that Grandad meant something a whole bunch worse.

Could explain why, at times much like now, when he scanned the election news in the original Calgary Eye Opener, he could be heard muttering "Dirty Potlickers!!!" under his doggy breath. Over and over and over.

Let the mud wrestling begin...

2011-03-23T08:14:00.014-04:00

It doesn't take a cranky semimythical doggie's sahnsitive schnozz to smell the soft reek of an unwanted election hardening. The finance minister positively beamed as he spooled up his precast talking points with yesterday's interviewers, that his prudent budget was, no, nay, never intended to provoke an election. Because you know, his government would never indulge in that kind of game playing.

Ptui. And yes, motivated canines can spit as well as cats, anytime.

The PM must feel relief at ditching the mime show of interest in the nation's policy good. I'm sure it's been a strain. Now he can get back to his hyperpartisan self, start smearing other parties as the irresponsible motivators - those jerks - and get on with his real agenda. One more tiresome crack at that elusive majority.

He is far from the first PM to maneuver thus. It's as if he has combed and taken to heart every instance of political gamesmanship for the past 40 or 50 years. But only from comic books. Finer nuances have been lacking from the beginning. And every time the PM or his wunderkind perceive that they got away with another one, they dumb their playbook down another notch, to even cruder ploys.

Hence the near-permanent barrage of contemptuous US-Republican-style ads slagging the opposition leader's character and telling Canadians - in terms of the lowest possible denominator - "Tories good. Others evil".

Finally in the last couple of weeks, emboldened by a growing flood of character and corruption issues starting to jet out from behind the PMO's crumbling disciplinary dike, opposition parties have started throwing back smears of their own. Parliamentary politics lately has become like hippos mud wrestling in a smallish plastic playpool. Hardly germane to any watcher, but unavoidably backsplattertastic.

Lost in that storm is anything like discussion of actual platforms or policies. The best we can hope for is the rote equivalent of a Grade 11 Pep Club Coordinator's high school election promises of free beer in the water fountains. Meant to charm superficially for a moment, but unbelievable, unattainable, and after the spray settles, undelivered.

Very well. Let the mud wrestling begin. But ask yourself: what the hell are federal elections actually supposed to be about? And based on that, maybe ask a candidate or two a question. Or two. And possibly keep at 'em until you get real answers.

Tips for Criminal Masterminds: Crown Assets

2011-03-02T21:13:00.000-05:00

So you want to be a criminal mastermind. You’ve got the IQ. You’ve got the naked ambition to take over the world. But you need materials and supplies. Where to go for good deals on the stuff your world dominating organization needs? Why not try the government?

Crown Assets Canada is currently auctioning two skids of 30-minute road flares (minimum bid: $ 6,672.50). and a whole pile of marine cordage (no minimum bid).

[Notes:

(a) It might be worth waiting on the flares. They were up for sale in February with a minimum bid of $7,850.00, but there were no bids, so the price has dropped by 15%.

(b) The minimum bid is still a big savings over the retail price.

(c) If you don’t know what you’d do with 5600 road flares and heavy marine cordage, you might be evil but you’re no genius.]

Also, if you act fast, you can buy a firetruck (minimum bid: only $3000!) Just the thing for pulling off a major heist in a downtown core.

Bonus Crown Asset items to help you set a criminal mastermind ambiance:

Breaking Mews!

2011-02-25T10:00:00.002-05:00

All muses have been claimed!

But, perhaps the monkey is still available for you Coyote...

Going begging

2011-02-24T07:03:00.005-05:00

It was either extensive research, or insomnia last weekend after one too many beavertails on the canal, that led us to the momentous discovery that could lead the Elgin Street Irregulars out of cyber-irrelevance. Or, more likely, allow us to continue to be the self-referential wankers that our regular readers have come to know, and be deeply disturbed by. People, the domain name "ca.ca" is apparently unregistered. Online gold going begging!

Gosh, I don't know about you, but I can think of a ton of business propositions that could hang off that kind of online identity. And three or six political parties, too.

Thank you. I just wanted you to know. That is all.

A Muse Yourselves

2011-02-20T20:46:00.011-05:00

I have been known to get grumpy with the ESIs over their whining about their missing Muse. I have been know to tell them to, "Get over it!".

Good news darling ESIs! You can now trundle on over to Images on Bank Street where it seems that you can pick out a new muse...

Let Bigfoot be!

2011-02-18T08:43:00.013-05:00

The last day or two, I've seen an unfamiliar term. At least one media story has characterized the PM's treatment of international development ~~sock-puppet~~ minister Bev Oda as "Bigfooting".

Us semimythical critters have a circuit. We all know everybody else. I'm proud and privileged to say that back in the day I shared stages with "the" Bigfoot when we gigged psychedelic festivals at the height of his fame. Later, after the biz lost its innocence, went commercial, and the suits and beancounters and copyright grifters co-opted everything that was good and pure, Ol' Biggie took to the nostalgia tour circuit to keep hairy body and soul together. When I had backstage passes, I'd look for him in the greenroom and catch up over a complimentary sody pop or two.

Ol' Biggie was one of the true giants, an enigmatic prince of a guy who was talented beyond belief. It was perhaps inevitable that a fire that burned so brightly would start to consume itself. But even during his later, well-documented struggles with the dark, self-destructive downsides of early fame, he never lost his innate sweetness, his openness or his generosity. His subsequent choice to become a virtual recluse was one he took to protect himself, and one that nobody who knew him would begrudge. I don't even know how to find him anymore, really. But I'm glad he finally got clean and sober.

So, if Harper has the temerity to think he can ever authentically Bigfoot anybody, I say only this:

"Prime Minister, I served with Bigfoot, I knew Bigfoot, Bigfoot was a friend of mine. Prime Minister, you're no Bigfoot."

For Valentine's Day Kisses...

2011-02-14T10:06:00.007-05:00

... don't forget to wear your prophylactic plastic lips. It's the height of flu season, people! These babies totally smack down Purell®ing your tongue after the fact, no matter what some of the dodgy-looking gentlemen hovering near those now-ubiquitous hand sanitizer dispensers (in the lobbies of better public buildings everywhere) might say.

And after you've made your sanitary smooshing preparations, and served your sweetheart a romantic Valentine's banquet, remember to get back to us on how you, ummm, made out.

Some of us are all ears. At least the parts that aren't plastic lips...

RNDP: The President's Choice for Valentines Day

2011-02-12T11:47:00.001-05:00

I thought I'd finished with the Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm, but no, here's something new and revolutionary.

The President says:

Surprise your sweetie with an extra-charming Valentine’s Day - at home! Our PC® Dine-In Tonight™ soups, pastas, entrees and desserts are quick and easy, so you can spend less time prepping and more time with your dearest!

We would love to hear from any men who followed this advice. Please give us details of how well it went over.

When in doubt, mumble. Again.

2011-02-11T07:18:00.011-05:00

Canada's minister for international co-operation ain't nicknamed "Bev Yoda" for nuthin'.

Whenever she wades deep into (another) ministerial bafflement about exactly what "international co-operation" might mean, she's a verbal Jedi. As she spouts the political equivalent of "I'm not the droid you want", her characteristic circular confusion fogs everything around her, all the way up to the already-tortured ozone layer.

Now, there's a theory out there that she's really a genius, hamstrung by her prime minister. He doesn't know tweet (or Tweet©) about international development yet micromanages it on the fly, pulling partisan pseudo-policy out of ~~his ass~~ ummm, thin air. Then he kicks her onto the public gym mat, to flip-flop gracelessly in defense of the indefensible.

But the evidence suggests the incompetence is her own. Under her, the Canadian International Development Agency is so knotted up by contradictory ministerial directives that it doesn't do much anymore. This may be what she wants. Or what her boss wants. That way he can declare CIDA, and/or her, redundant.

Bev Oda's latest misadventure involves somebody who, after all the relevant high-level civil servants signed a funding approval for an aid group called Kairos, scrawled a big, crude "NOT" into the official typed document to reverse its intent at the last minute. And incidentally, the labours of CIDA's own approval process. After which the minister signed it. Ummm, maybe. She's called it a routine decision ever since, up to and including the point where the parliamentary speaker said yesterday that he probably should censure her for lying about it. Except that he was so damn confused he couldn't. See what I mean? Yoda.

Why would a semi-mythical coyote in a paw-sucking midwinter funk rouse himself to rail about the deeds a lousy second-tier minister, when bigger battles loom? Because of what it shows. Her party's, and her leader's partisan manipulation of every area of government policy, and its arrogant disdain for due process is something previous governments took decades to get to. It ain't doing much for Canada's shredding international rep. Or for that matter, us at home. These guys want an election? A majority?

Thank you for listening, InterTubes. I shall now subside back into my Slough of Despond, until only my wrinkled, seasonally affective nose is visible. Other, bigger, battles later...

So, love...?

2011-01-24T08:01:00.014-05:00

The Elgin Street Irregulars once had a thing or six to say about the psychology of relationships. It was a forte. We semimythical coyotes haven't gone there in quite awhile. Lately we've preferred a surreal playground of our own making.

But hey. It's the black depths of January and even my splendiferous new Coyotie Blankie is a few R-values short of adequate. As Winnipeggers say whenever the frost is this bitter: "Cold enough to freeze the balls off the Golden Boy." Ottawa, at this moment, is probably freezing the balls off the Famous Five...

I digress. How inappropriate. Probably brain-freeze.

Anyway, this weekend, with Valentine's Day on the horizon, and likely an election also, the PM, in an intimate heart-to-heart with about 600 hand-picked ~~clapping seals~~ party faithful, told the country that no one loves it more than his government. Well, except, maybe, him.

He loves the country so much, in fact, he can't bear to think of it going out with anyone else. He loves it so much, he wants a parliamentary majority so he can change it completely, to suit himself. I imagine that he believes with every fibre of his fibreglass hair that Canada would love him right back if only it would do exactly what he says.

Canada, can we talk? Now is a good time for you to checklist, honestly, how many of the warning signs of an emotionally abusive relationship the guy has displayed in the last five years. I'm just sayin'...

The worst part for the Stevester...

2011-01-14T11:16:00.011-05:00

...about manipulating the country into another unwanted election, no matter how badly he wanted it, no matter how much he thought that maybe he could pull off a majority this time, was having to retool his usual, grim, authoritarian public persona.

He had to overcome deep personal distaste. To pretend to be warm and fuzzy, to con (heh...) the all-important female vote.

As Ottawa's chattering gaggles twittered themselves into a pre-electoral tizzy, Stevie-baby knew that the old quick fixes - like the much-lampooned blue sweater vest - were stale toast.

It'd have to be something bold enough to change minds without forcing him to change any of his deeply held, yet deeply unpopular, political stands. Yet something that spoke to his inner rockstar. So he hired rafts full of image consultants. Wrangled. Bit the bullet. Called in the fiberglas supplier that had done his hair for years. All the while, he feared that the gargantuan cost of retooling the factory dies completely would show him up as a hypocrite - or worse, a laughingstock - when the inevitable Access To Information Act requests uncovered it.

(Steverino's note to self: Kill that lousy act! Deader!)

Then, miraculously, the sales rep slyly suggested another fiberglas hair model already on the assembly line! It fit the bill perfectly...

Original photo: Remy Steinegger, Wikimedia Commons. You know where the hair came from...

Coffee with Mister Sloppy

2011-01-06T07:15:00.007-05:00

When I dropped by Mister Sloppy's Centretown lair the other day to wish him a belated happy new year - or whatever passes for "happy" among elite-level evil geniuses - he was frenetically stuffing mailer boxes with gift coffee mugs. Given the guy's "It is Better to Swipe Outright than to Give or Receive" schema, it seemed out of character.

"No, no. Not really," he grinned, blue eyes bright with merriment and the usual insanity. "Didja read that news item the other day? The one about the transatlantic flight making an emergency landing because the pilot spilled coffee?"

Suddenly wary, I eyed the stacks of mugs sporting myriad famous high tech logos, and reached for the Rolaids. Sloppy was up to no good again.

"You, ummm, had something to do with that?" I asked.

"Not a thing! But it gave me a great idea! Every major lab in the world is fueled with caffeine. Heck, I've even been known to abuse the stuff slightly myself, on my own projects! So I just figured, you know, anonymously send all the researchers gift coffee cups with their company logos on 'em."

"Aaaaannnnddd?" I asked. When Mister Sloppy is happy, there's always an "Aaaaannnnddd?"

"Of course there is," he said impatiently, apparently reading my thoughts.

"Creepy," I thought. "I might need to check into that."

"No. You don't," Mister Sloppy said out loud. "It's a whole other thing. Nothing to do with this. Lookit, I'm proud of these. Every science guy in the world takes their coffee cup everywhere. These mugs are my new memory-enhanced nanoceramic. They're programmed at the atomic level to scan nearby computers or test equipment, then transmit a quantum-burst packet of all their data to my stealth server farm. Oh. Then they spill hot coffee on everything and short it out."

"So you're actually stealing...?"

"The sum total of the world's latest research. It's all good!

Maybe for evil geniuses. I declined a complimentary gift mug on the way out. And behind me, Mister Sloppy's laughter echoed like cats fighting in an alley...

On the third day of Christmas

2010-12-27T07:28:00.005-05:00

We semimythical coyotes may have mentioned a time or two that we are minor deities in a North American pantheon unrelated to Christmas. In fact, we predate it. That said, we ain't averse to Christmas presents. Specially the edible ones.

So. Picture my immense ~~bafflement~~ joy upon finding that some of my most valued friends had chipped in to buy me a thoughtful gift of a fluffy polar fleece blanket. As advertised on TV. With sleeves in it. One for each leg, actually. ~~What were they thinking????~~ I gladly accepted it in the spirit in which it was given.

And imagine, if you will, my further ~~mumblemuttermumble~~ glee on Boxing Day, when I found - completely by accident - that they had been so ~~conniving~~ thoughtful as to order it specially custom-made, with my monogram on it. ~~No hope of returning that sucker~~. I shall treasure it forever.

To my dear, dear friends who ~~drunk-dialed the shopping channel at three A.M.~~ searched high and low to find ol' coyote such a perfect gift, I just want y'all to know that it moves me so deeply, I'm already mulling how to return the favour next HannuKwanzaChristmas.

And don't go saying, "Awwwww, shucks, coyote, old buddy! Pish-tosh! Forget it! No need to go to all that trouble!"

I really want to. From the bottom of my grateful heart. And I know where you live...

Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T22:10:00.003-05:00

Stocking Stuffers from Wilde's

2010-12-16T22:15:00.000-05:00

The humanity...

2010-12-12T11:20:00.007-05:00

With PM Stephen Harper's recent trashing of Jumpin' Jack Flash...

...the insanity of world politics and the built-in escalation of mutually assured destruction guarantees that some uber-competitive alpha dog type will up the ante until the world careens on greased rails into a post-modern wasteland completely lacking decent enforcement of U.S. copyright laws. And who might fill that role?

Vladimir Putin, of course. With an, ummm, impromptu rendition of the inimitable Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill:

The humanity! Oh, the humanity! My heart and large sensitive ears bleed... at least until the inevitable Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notices are issued. Soon! Please...

Arms Free

2010-12-06T20:51:00.009-05:00

There is driving hands-free, and then there is...

Warning: Cool people will be thrown from building

2010-11-27T16:34:00.002-05:00

Credit: my keen-eyed nephew

Feet, however, are permitted

2010-11-23T00:52:00.001-05:00

Alexandria, Ont., Nov. 21

The principal principle principle

2010-11-19T07:22:00.006-05:00

Lately, I have noticed a disturbing trend in the language of the prime minister and his henchthingies. You know, the new-but-rapidly-aging trick with which, faced with any old screwup of their own making, they contrive to still appear (heh...) right, because their stand is based on "Principles".

This phrase is uttered in tones of finality. The kind that suggest that all things the PM labels as "Principles" cannot, must not, be questioned. By anybody. Because it's, you know, a Principle. Therefore Unassailable.

To the PM's fans, the term also implies pleasing undertones of moral discourse. Therefore even more Unassailable. One never negotiates Morality.

In a short time, the trick has become a trope, the new lazy-ass-all-purpose spin management tool over at the PMO. Splop a few random "Principles" into the speaking points on everything very arguably sketchy and/or dumb and, hey, presto, all butts are completely wallpapered clear up to the ethical ceiling. Which at this juncture, is, ummm, low.

My Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Ed.©®™, is an admirably clear (and massive) reference, but with two-odd dense pages of alternative definitions for "principle" ya know there's plenty of room for creative (and handy) misinterpretation.

Avowed principles - especially in politics, and especially among recent ruling parties, are not necessarily fundamental or immutable, or even true. They are ideas upon which policies are based. Sometimes pretty bad ideas. Even rotten ones. If you have a minute, you could look up "rotten" in the Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Ed.©®™.

I could, of course, have gotten all of this deplorably wrong. I am semimythically canine and fallible.

The prime minister could - and maybe would - logically argue that his principles can't be wrong. Because he has none left.

I don't get paid enough to create Google poems

2010-11-09T21:04:00.000-05:00

* I don't get paid enough to deal with this guy!

* I don't get paid enough to fix it.

* I don't get paid enough to do this job

* I don't get paid enough to potentially get blown up by an IED and be away from my family for a year ($2250/mth right now), but I do it anyway.

* I Don't Get Paid Enough To Blog (2), I should know better then to do meta

* I don't get paid enough to even consider it.

* I don't get paid enough to explain this, but I promise twenty, thirty or fifty years from now, a house bought will be worth more than you paid for it today. You'd have to be stupid as a zombie to keep paying rent...

* I don't get paid enough to kiss your a**!

*You ruffle too many feathers, and at the moment I don't get paid enough to handle the stress of that kind of feather-ruffling on my front page with my name over the top of it.

* I would definitely take my tantrums elsewhere, but I don't get paid enough to.

* I don't get paid enough to be abused.

* I don't get paid enough to put up with the crap that people are giving me.

* I don't get PAID enough to spend as much time as you do here.

*I don't get paid enough to put up with a toddler that gives me bruises and bites the hell out of me every time he gets put in time out.

* personally, I don't get paid enough to be a judge for everyone in the blogosphere.

* I don't get paid enough to touch used panties, and I won't do it.

* I don't get paid enough to live in fear of being hacked by my fellow co-workers.

* I don't get paid enough to think.

The colour of poppies

2010-11-05T15:45:00.015-04:00

A day or two ago, one of this city's newspapers rapped a local peace group's white poppy campaign for civilian war dead, disparaging it as "a bunch of hippies giving big group hug (sic) and hoping for peace." Editorial reaction elsewhere is nearly as churlish, leaning toward telling "the peaceniks" to butt out of the official red poppy drive. The Royal Canadian Legion is unamused. It apparently has the poppy copyrighted. And maybe poppyrighted.

One can find an individual veteran or two who sees nothing wrong with the idea, but most news seems to hold crankier quotes, working up a fine lather in the week before Remembrance Day. Discourse in this country has gotten impolite everywhere, not just in that asylum on the hill.

Canada's last veteran from that long-ago unpleasantness just died recently, but when I was a slightly younger coyote, there were still any number of people who had served in the First World War, living their lives. They dwelt on future walkers, wheelchairs and care homes rarely, if at all.

One, whom I happened across quite often as he hiked in the foothills near Calgary, was one of the most pacific men I have ever met. I don't think he ever raised his voice about anything. I do not recall that he spoke about his part in that conflict, either, except to mention that he'd spent two years at a sanitarium in southern Ontario, recovering from tuberculosis after the war ended. He also mentioned humourously, in passing, exactly once, how he and other soldiers in the trenches would amuse themselves holding cootie derbies and laying penny bets, after picking lice off of themselves to race up broomstraws. There wasn't much else amusing going on, obviously. He never spoke of war otherwise, and when others did around him, a quietly pained expression crossed his usually-happy face.

He always kept a red-flocked paper poppy pinned to the lapel of his topcoat. I, being a coyote, did not trouble myself as to why. But one who knew him told me he felt bound to honour his old comrades beyond November 11. And in the way it has with semimythical coyotes, the west wind told me even later that he had been invalided out of the trenches of northern Europe just at the end of the last miserable winter before the Battle of Passchendaele.

There's not much more to go on but supposition. But I think he may have been - by the simple good luck of nearly dying from tuberculosis at the right time - one of the few in his regiment to live after the generals ran it into the machine guns. And that he wanted, as long as he could, to carry the standard of their memory. On the unspoken evidence, he seemed to value civilian lives just as highly as military ones. I think he approved highly of peace. I rather suspect he would see no difference between white poppies and red ones. But then, we dogs are colourblind...

Maman walks The Line

2010-10-28T06:48:00.015-04:00

You have no doubt heard news of the National Gallery's new acquisition, One Hundred Foot Line, planted of late on the foothills of Nepean Point.

I understand that, nominally, it represents a bare, limbless tree. With the right lighting (read: "brooding and dramatic") it's pretty spectacular. It is a tall pointy metal stick to be reckoned with, but not for wimpy, mild cirrus-cloud summer days. Yet I was also kinda jealous when the guys over at OttawaStart.com came up with the line: "A huge monument to sticking your tongue to a cold pole."

The other day, after each of us had wandered down serially to look up (waaaaaay up...) at it, Robin K. from Watawa Life and me had a lengthy philosophical discussion about the phenomenological and epistemological implications of really humongous public art.

Long story short, Robin said he still far preferred Maman, out front. He's cooler on stainless steel toothpicks. Or in his words, "Who wouldn't like a statue of a giant spider?"

About then, some semimythical idiot piped up thoughtlessly, "...but has no one considered how cool it would look if Maman was climbing that steel tree? Epic, in a King Kong on the Empire State Building kinda way! But more spidery and metallic…!"

It was at that fateful point that Robin fatefully uttered the fateful words: "Agreed! Send her up."

Genius.

About last night....

2010-10-26T07:49:00.003-04:00

That'll do. As you were.

Vote. Just vote.

2010-10-24T08:24:00.012-04:00

Y'know, it's been a long four years. You'd never realize it from reading all the crap I've posted here, but us coyotes hate blogging politics.

Unlike the mayor himself, who somehow always manages to word things so that he squirms away from taking any actual responsibility for anything negative that occurs on his watch, I blame Larry O'Brien. He has been so egregiously bad that something hadda be said.

Being a yapper, I said it. Now I'm nearly hoarse. Well actually, I'm still a coyote. For those among you who are not trained aesthetes, horses are bigger 'n dumber, kick ya in the slats when offended, and have way less awesome ears than coyotes. But I digress.

All I really want to say here is that Monday is municipal election day in Ontario. I really don't even care who the hell you vote for. Just vote. Because the way it's supposed to work is that the more people participate, the more representative are the decisions they make. Theoretically. If some schmucks happen to be elected - and schmucks very likely will be elected - at least they will represent everybody.

Tomorrow. Just vote. You'll make a very old, hoarse semimythical coyote very happy. I'm pretty sure after tomorrow I can finally shut the hell up about egregiously bad mayors and get back to my true calling: bloggin' mumumelons. Chasing your cat. Stuff that matters. It's time.

Lawn sign credit: firelarryobrien.com. In no way affiliated with the Elgin Street Irregulars, but some of us like their style.

Ghost of Past Election

2010-10-21T20:00:00.002-04:00

I came across this sign a couple of years ago...

I wonder if the owners of the sign regret tossing it in the garbage?

Google Poem: Do we really want a mayor?

2010-10-20T22:32:00.000-04:00

* Personally, I don't want a mayor who isn't willing to do the legwork to ensure that all of her/his nominators are in fact on the voters list

* I don't want a mayor or councillor who blames new people for the ills of this community.

* I don't want a mayor who is too scary to talk to.

* I don't want a mayor with a track record of over 80% failure in city hall. I've been in the damn #verizon store so much that I'm the mayor

* We don't want a mayor that goes by his opinion only

* I don't want a mayor who's going to get up on his soap box, shake his fist and “stand up for our city”.

* I don't want a mayor that show-boats with an Islamic extremist that believes suicide bombers and the execution of homosexuals are acceptable.

* I don't want a mayor that delivers "energy" and "renewal"

* pick whatever hackneyed adage or idiom you'd like but the reality is I don't want a mayor who will make me feel good

* We don't want a mayor that signs papers without reading them.

* They don't want a Mayor who insists on protecting the hills, air and water, and avoid big-time traffic increases.

* I don't want a mayor that waddles.

* They don't want a mayor that would have this bunch, or an essentially similar one, happier in their work. They want a mover and a shaker

* I don't want a mayor that sits back and lets the city go down the tubes to protect his buddy Longos feelings.

* I don't want a mayor that's going to drop dead half-way through.

* I don't want a mayor who says “I'M WORKING FOR U”. It's not difficult at all to type the other 2 letters to make the correct word.

A Big Yellow Taxi moment

2010-10-19T12:23:00.010-04:00

This past weekend, the (almost former) mayor piled more, ummm, vision, into his "vision for Ottawa": (yet) another suburb, to be serviced by a ring road plowed through the city's green belt. It was at one and the same time a Big Yellow Taxi moment and a heartfelt cry for help. Involving emergency laser eye surgery.

Us coyotes can't help noticing that most of the mayor's recent vente speculative fictions involve the thoughtless trashing of the city's public open spaces: running electric rail along the Ottawa River Parkway; a Lansdowne Park deal that bobbled lands in the public trust into private developers' waiting hands, with a nifty side deal to carve big a new exhibition space out of the southern greenbelt; and now the ring road idea.

Now, the green belt has been eyed with avarice and intent by developer types for most of its five-decade run. To them, it is 20,350 hectares of prime open space ideally situated for plunking down any old building they care to name. If only they could get their frustrated mitts on it.

A lot has changed since a rather well-regarded city planner guy named Jacques Gréber suggested the idea in 1950, and it may well be in the public interest to revisit its whithers and wherefores. But I'm unconvinced that Mayor Larry is the guy to shepherd the process. He has already amply demonstrated a really unfortunate bias toward what us coyotes call "inappropriate development", along with a serious disregard for the niceties of due process, and an utter lack of intelligent consideration of consequences.

We coyotes, of course, are biased in an entirely other direction. You might say hizzoner's purported big picture schemes hit us where we live. Because, well, they do.

But the public open spaces that the city under this mayor has already dealt away - or wants to - are treasures. If citizens decide to give 'em up after proper debate, fine. But it should only be for the right reasons, and for a fair payback. Even, one might hazard, and I am aware of the irony of my using this word, as a part of a vision. If possible, one grander, more inspiring and more cohesive than badly focused pipe dreams.

At the very least, you'd better damn good and sure before you throw away something as scarce as green space in a city. Because if there's one thing us coyotes know, it's that once you pave paradise, it's lost. And as Joni sang back in her chirpier, more soprano-y days, ya don't know what ya got 'til it's gone.

ESI caption contest!

2010-10-15T01:15:00.001-04:00

The prize? Not being thrown to the lions.

Emergency Meeting Minutes: 2010-10-08

2010-10-12T17:31:00.002-04:00

Venue: The Usual Spot

Present: The Chair, Conch Shell, Independent Observer (late with reasonable excuse) Coyote (late with no excuse)
Absent (with regrets, no excuse): 4th Dwarf, Woodsy
Absent (no regrets, reasonable excuse): Agatha
Guests: Harmony, Painted Stick

1. Oh, the irony

The Chair notes that this is the first ESI emergency meeting that both he and Conch Shell have attended in a long time and muses as to the coincidental absence of all of the other ESI members at this point. Given both the Chair and Conchie no longer corner the market on the whole “passive-aggressive” thing, the meeting moves on to other matters.

2. Whither the Usual Spot

Those ESI’s present and accounted for (ahem) note that the Usual Spot is less busy than usual and speculate whether the it has lost its hipness with the local denizens after more than a decade of holding top spot on the drag.

Harmony: It’s about time this place got bounced from its status. You can’t ride on your laurels forever. Much like certain blogs, ahem, this place is getting stale and dated.

Conch Shell: Where are the hipsters going, then?

Harmony: [redacted] seems to have the edge these days, though I think it smells like pee.

Chair: Has Coyote been marking other spots around town, again?

Discussion ensues about finding a new Usual Spot without much consensus.

3. Whither the [redacted]

Conch: Did you see where [redacted] is looking at wedding rings again?

Chair: I hope she knows what she’s doing? The last time didn’t turn out so well.

Harmony: Three-times the charm, I say.

Chair: Which means she has to go through all this for another full turn before she gets it right.

Conch: And she hasn’t even finished all the messiness with [redacted].

Debate ensues about whether one needs to race to the “three-times the charm” spot or does one pretend to make a go of it with all the interim relationships.

Chair: Some have managed to make it “two-times the charm”. Look at [redacted] and [redacted].

After a momentary pause followed by a chorus of laughter, it is agreed that we wish [redacted] all the best with [redacted] and move on to the next agenda item.

4. Whither the blog

Picking up on Harmony’s passing reference to “stale and dated”, discussion moves to the Ottawa blog scene.

Conch: I see Megan has decided to stop blogging.

Chair: I liked her analogy to breaking up. It’s so true. You have to know when to pull the plug. I also see that some anonymous commenter made a swipe at us along the same line.

Conch: Have blogs become passez in Ottawa?

Harmony: In Ottawa, more like passez-composer. Everyone tweets now. Even Zoom. If you can’t express it in 140 characters or less, it’s not worth saying.

Chair: Maybe CB radio will make a come-back. I think social networking needs to return to its roots. Plus it has a better lingo to work with.

Harmony: That’s a big 10-4.

Chair: Have you seen this blog? My question is, how come none of us are profiled in it? It claims to be a feature about strangers.

Harmony: Well, no one is stranger than you lot.

Conch: Someone should do an outreach. Maybe it’ll help re-brand us.

Chair: [in a CB drawl] The others may tell us to pull the hammer back on this one. May have to wait for the big 10-4 before we get to beat the bushes.

Chair breaks into the song “Convoy”, Conch Shell gets up and leaves. Shortly thereafter, the IO, Coyote, and Painted Stick join the group.

5. Whither the mayoralty race

Discussion ensues regarding the 20 fielded candidates to run the O-town’s city hall for next four years.

IO: Do we need adopt an ESI position?

Chair: I think Coyote has already. Or at least we know who he’s not likely endorsing.

Harmony: Me thinks Coyote doth protest too much.

Coyote: Doth you?

Harmony: Yeth

Chair: The bigger question to me is: who’s Coyote going to kick around come November? Things aren’t looking good for Lex Luthor.

IO: Jimmy Olsen better watch it. Coyote doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Coyote: I hang out with you lot.

Chair: We can only hope Andy Hayden makes a comeback.

IO: Duly noted.

Several motions get bantered back and forth on an official ESI position. In the end, we decide to defer any endorsements and order another round of drinks plus a shot of distemper for Coyote.

6. Other matters

The issue of PETA comes up in relation to Woodsy’s recent post. By unanimous vote, all ESI’s present support our intrepid photographer’s work and encourage her to continue to find similar subject matter for future blogging.

Having dispensed with the formalities, the meeting was adjourned.

Smells like diss-spirit

2010-10-08T13:48:00.011-04:00

Like all canines, we coyotes are connoisseurs of the aromatic. And the strong whiff we whiffed in the environs of Hizzoner-the-mayor yesterday was the reek of sweaty failure.

The mayor had lurched off the high road he claimed he would stick to when he started campaigning, to diss 77-year-old opponent Andrew Haydon with the jibe that he was "past his best-before date".

Them darned gotcha media picked up on it, and by the evening news, His Nibs was making like a Maytag, trying to respin that infelicitous turn of phrase to mean only Haydon's ideas, not the man himself.

That the mayor was pissed about looking like a jerk (again) was self-evident. Whether he accepted that he authored his own misfortune was less so. He tried to force a smile as he twisted in the wind - but the TV interviews betrayed a flat, clipped voice, a hard glare and gritted teeth behind perfunctorily-curved lips.

With about two weeks left to campaign, he's transitioned from his usual baseless confidence into a muted desperation hallmarked, in about equal parts, by abortive Hail Mary passes and highly defensive-sounding damage control.

He still struggles to project a self-confident visual, but the invisible bouquet that cascades from him belies it. Somebody else, I might feel sorry for. Since it's Larry 0'Brien, I'm snappin' a clothes peg over my snout to block the growing odour of flop sweat. And as has been my habit for four years, rolling my eyes heavenward until election day and trusting in the, ummm, wisdom of crowds.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!

2010-10-07T21:27:00.013-04:00

I chatted briefly with these three friendly turkey lovers before taking their picture.

I found it rather odd that the girls were promoting PETA in such tiny sexy outfits, but then I googled PETA images...

Google Poem Thanksgiving

2010-10-06T21:54:00.001-04:00

* I'm just thankful that there are people that are trying to help me, and to those people I just want to say thanks for all that you do.
* I'm just thankful my clothes are fitting, because I am going to stay out of maternity clothes as long as possible.
* i'm just thankful i had a childhood to remember now that everyone has been taken over by everything that is just so unnatural.

* Sometimes I complain about all the things I need to do in my life, but really I'm just thankful I get tro stay at home with my sweet baby and that I have a work-at-home job and that I have THINGS that need packing.

* I'm lucky and thankful that Mr. Hot is in my life

* I'm just thankful that I find meaning and connection from doing ordinary things... like taking care of my dogs.
* I'm just thankful it was me and not some defenseless old lady or something.
* I'm just thankful I was also given talents where I can show my stuff for being a good dancer.

* I'm just thankful that we do not get all the government we pay for!

* I'm just thankful the photos weren't out of focus (I definitely was out of focus..)
* I'm just thankful to have this opportunity.
* I'm just thankful that you took the time to stand up and glorify the greatness we can be together.

* I'm just thankful that my daughter Kendall and our dear friend Ryan Lavery are not in jail for this crime.

* I'm just thankful that they won't be raising our taxes now that this wasteful boondoggle has been rejected.

* I'm just thankful Boras didn't get his claws on Chooch before we scr, er, negotiated that sweeeeet contract in January.

* I'm just thankful for guys like Edgar Wright, Duncan Jones, Danny Boyle (sometimes!)
* I'm just thankful that I got to use the coupon they advertised and that the people there, from the manager on down, are always so pleasant to deal with.

* I'm just thankful that I got wind of it before it was too late.

* I'm just thankful that the race officials acted so professionally and I wasn't seriously hurt in the crash.
* I'm just thankful that I can find the matches online and feed my burgeoning addiction.

* I'm just thankful it hurt. You know, cancer doesn't always hurt.

* I'm just thankful that I don't have to drive in the city, because I don't think I would make it!

* But I'm just thankful that people find it entertaining and, hopefully, thought-provoking.

* I'm just thankful she's finally stopped scribbling on walls, spreading lotion on every available surface and sneaking off to the middle of my bed for chocolate syrup experiments.

* Alright, basically I'm just thankful to them for not banning websites that I spend 80% of my virtual time on which includes Facebook, You-tube and Twitter

[*]

Who You Gonna Call?

2010-10-06T10:00:00.001-04:00

Bed bugs are all the rage these days...

Should I ever need mattress protectors, I know what company to call now. But, I would certainly not want them parked in front of my house.

P.S. Don't forget to mouse over the photo...

Darkly dreaming of dirty work at the crossroads

2010-10-06T07:55:00.008-04:00

One niggling issue with buying a brain is that it is - so far, anyway - only an aftermarket accessory. I expect that will change at some point, but at the moment, Mayor Larry's attempt to bolt on some kinda political savvy is hampered by the fact that his actual, own brain is still the one hooked directly to his mouth. Mouth-shooting neurons being as speedy as they are, he can say all kindsa crap before the hired brain can, ummm, hit the Emergency Crash Override button.

So it was, with the Ottawa Stun's editorial board yesterday. Larry blurted that he had a hard time not thinking, as unnamed "more suspicious people" apparently already have, that former regional chairman Andy Haydon's entry into the mayoral race was engineered by front-runner Jim Watson to bleed off Larry fans and cause his ultimate mayoral demise.

Apparently, any unelection event would so not be Larry's fault. Also apparently, Larry fans, while ummm, legion, can't tell two bald guys apart. I'll take a moment to point out to fiscal conservative types who might be duped by such nefariosity that Haydon, while indeed partly bald, is an actual practicing fiscal conservative who knows how to do that kinda thing successfully. He is also capable of pithiness. Unlike me. I just digressed again.

Larry's campaign manager, Robert Thompson was in there yanking the leash. But it musta have been one of those spring-loaded thingies I see on all the posher domestic doggies: you know, the ones that can unreel to about 10 metres like taut clotheslines, to trip ya up. The leasher can theoretically thumb a brake button to shorten the line, and head off the leashee's intemperate darts into heavy traffic or other disasters - say, an unfortunate roll in something really smelly and unpleasant - but would have to be damnably quick on the draw* to slow down His Nibs.

So it was only after the blurtage that Thompson managed to yank that leash and tell Larry to STFU and get back onto the media line script. Carefully crafted by someone who's not Larry. A new, improved Larry 2.0 indeed. Two, ummm, too, bad about that legacy code...

* Mental digression: some freakishly-quick gamer with years of practice on X-Box or Playstation controllers might have developed the lightning reflexes needed. But I doubt they'd have the interest.

How dumb am I supposed to be, again...?

2010-10-05T07:39:00.019-04:00

I'm on a roll. While I sucked my paws over the state of federal politics yesterday, the incumbent mayor, in what I imagine he hoped was a display of charming candour, finally admitted out loud what sentient Ottawattamies have pretty much realized since their last municipal election-night hangovers hit: that his first half-term was a disaster cratered with "rookie mistakes".

Oh, that his nibs finally got anything even half right is fairly momentous. But us semimythical coyotes still find him charmless. Being played for a simpleton by someone who lacks the chops to do the job right does that to us... I digress. That phrase is getting to be such a trademark that I'm gonna put that on a baseball cap and market it. I digress again...

It may be that the mayor figured that if he copped to his record of awfulness, he could then, whenever after it comes up, do what spin doctors call "changing channels". This is saying, in effect, "I've already dealt with that, it's ancient news, now let's just move on and talk about what really matters. Which is anything but that.". Watch for it.

It was also the sort of calculated move that suggests the guy is temporarily listening to his store-bought brain instead of the winging it that is his wont. Polling at less than half the support of your leading rival apparently focuses even the most scattered mind. Oh, he fondly imagines himself as a big ideas guy, but he's just scattered.

And what are we to make of what David Reevely calls "Larry 2.0"? The things he imagines to be his latter-day signature victories - like flogging the very public Lansdowne Park to the first very private commercial developers that had the balls to just ask for it, whilst shredding due process - are, well, who he is.

Self-proclaimed 2.0 status aside, worrying signs of that problematic unselfaware hubris remain. The guy who thought he was going to ride into Dodge City and change things all by hisself didn't even know what he didn't know then. He has never grasped important nuances. Driving a city this size on a learner's permit is dangerous egotism. And he's still more than a little hung up on how important being a 'multimillionaire' makes him - in multiple statements. (Read 'em if ya have the stomach.)

It takes more than a bunch of hired mouthpieces who are all about an election-year surface wax & buff to change the fact of a man whose flaws are deeply embedded in his personality. Four more years of Larry has a very high probability of being four more years of the same, no matter what he - or the backroom - think they're floggin'.

"Smartest guy in the room"

2010-10-04T13:57:00.006-04:00

We coyotes understand that reviewers of Stately Glob columnist Lawrence Martin's new book about Stephen Harper have latched onto the PM's venom toward small and large-L liberals as noteworthy.

It is, not because it's anything new, but because it helps begin to explain the current malaise in this country's political landscape. The fact that Conservatives' main rebuttal so far is to label Mr. Martin a "large-L liberal sympathizer", like that alone should fully explain and dismiss his findings, just underlines it.

The PM, portrayed by his fan(s?) as the "smartest guy in the room" is indeed a great one for convoluted trickiness. Yet uncompromising tactics ranging from within the pale to, ummm, less so, all aimed at, quote, "killing the Liberal brand", have done little but shoot up his feet, and the rest of the place. That's a problem, not just for his political fellows who lust after that elusive parliamentary majority, but for the country.

Us coyotes have seen plenty of smartest guys in the room screw up royally through lack of wisdom. I could get all semimythically pedantic here about the ginormous abyss separating "smart" and "wise", but just gimme that one for argument's sake. I'm busy making a point, here.

Which is that any political guy who's so heavily invested in the tenet that all other political stripes in a democracy are the work of the Antichrist, to be seared from the face of the earth with brimstone, is no friend of the nation. Kicking that warm, fuzzy little dream out to its (il)logical extreme, while no doubt heady to some party hacks, has little to do with democracy. Or the reasonable checks and balances on power that help sustain it. For the democratic experiment to remain on the level, conservative yin needs liberal yang. Or vice versa. We coyotes are hazy on eastern religious concepts. We come from someplace else.

The parliamentary democracy that has evolved over the better part of a thousand years works best when players are flexible. That means taking the time to understand other viewpoints, respect for those outside your policy hothouse, and seeing the good of the nation - and all the diverse people and viewpoints it comprises - as the big-picture goal.

We coyotes like to keep our yellow eyes fixed on the big picture. Ya kinda hafta, watching six millenniums' worth of evolving human shenanigans. It's that, or rump of skunk and madness.

One of that grande vista's truisms is that any one national leader seldom bears in huge ways on citizens' personal lives, unless he/she is truly, determinedly awful. Oh. And true awfulness can be attained by chasing partisan goals to the exclusion of everything else, including actual, considered governance. Considered governance which, one might think, would be the point of being a prime minister.

I'm just sayin'...

Court strikes down prostitution law...

2010-10-01T12:11:00.007-04:00

...Tories react predictably

Original story here.
Zoom's cogent analysis here.

I went to International Talk Like a Pirate Day...

2010-09-20T14:13:00.006-04:00

...and when I regained consciousness somebody had dressed me up in this goofy outfit. Next time, I'm sending Fourth Dwarf. He deserves it.

Varmints... and varmints

2010-09-16T06:44:00.014-04:00

Full disclosure: Us coyotes are no fans of getting our fuzzy butts shot off. Especially by half-tons full of baseball-capped pseud cowboys, careening full tilt across the foothills, blasting merrily and often, with a astonishing range of rifles apparently all called "varmint guns". I gather that rural stop signs are often also varmints... I digress.

Another disclosure: Granny coyote used to excel at a very tricky high-speed dance that would lure drivers of such half-tons over big rocks that bent wheels, busted springs and punched holes in oil pans, while younger coyotes - hell, even passing jackrabbits - laughed our fuzzy butts off at safe distance. Granny was quite a joker.

Just so you know where I'm comin' from on this one. I have watcha might call an opinion about that long-gun registry the current government is so hellbent on, ummm, gunning down.

Really, the news a couple of days back that the US National Rifle Association was lending somewhat less-than-moral support to Canadian gun lobbyists was hardly a surprise, despite quick government and lobbyist denials. Their patented paranoid-nutbar brochure spiels about ill-defined freedom and the registry existing "so the police can come and take away all your guns in advance of a Nazi takeover" were cropping up here with tiresome regularity.

See, here's what I don't get. People drive cars, and need both operator and vehicle licenses to do so. Good idea, given that vehicles are, in the wrong hands and/or in the wrong situation, two-ton-plus weapons. As much as I enjoy hanging my tongue out the shotgun-side window into the breeze when Aggie drives me somewhere, I know they pack enough potential kinetic energy to kill.

Yet start talking about licenses for machines expressly designed to make enough kinetic energy to kill, and suddenly a bunch of people, many of whom ought to know better, start yelling "FREEDOMFREEDOMFREEDOM" at the tops of their leathery lungs. Yes, yes, yes, I know some weapons are useful tools for farmers and duck hunters too. A firearms registry does not make them any less useful to those who use 'em that way. Even supposing that gun ownership does equal freedom, freedom still equals responsibility. And registering weapons that blast big, irreparable holes in living organisms as a design feature is a reasonable, responsible thing to do in a civil democratic society, no matter what the hell the NRA, or anyone else, may yell at the top of their intriguingly well-rehearsed, very well-financed, voices.

That's the evil genius of the NRA - managing to conflate owning a gun with a big, hazy, near-undefinable motherhood word, using a withering barrage of fallacious arguments. The evil genius of the Conservative party is in playing politics with those acquired arguments, then preemptively accusing anyone who calls 'em out on it of 'playing politics'. And people call me a varmint!

As one of my coyote brethren from the Alberta days says, "Fallacious arguments during crooked 7-card stud seem to be all there are anymore..."

"Not finished yet" - Mayor Larry

2010-09-10T08:15:00.008-04:00

Dear god. What could possibly be left for him to screw up...?

Annoying phrase of the day: Housing Bubble

2010-09-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

Summer's end

2010-09-07T13:26:00.012-04:00

Some weird summer, huh? I fell asleep on my boat in July drinking a beer, and when I woke up I was the mayor of Ottawa!

Oh, wait. Coyotes don't got boats. Or beers. So either I'm still snoozing and dreaming, or regretfully and regrettably channeling some other rather unreliable narrator...

Dear me. I seem to digress earlier and earlier in these little screeds. This time I derailed before I even nailed down a theme, which should have been something along the lines of, "We semi-mythical trickster types are mostly optimistic souls, happily anticipating our next LOLs." I mean, we always keep an eye open for rainbows. (Especially ones made of bacon. If you see one, lemme know care of this blog...) But some of the doings in this country in the past few months have left us feeling decidedly waterbowl-half-empty. -Ish.

However ya slice it, I've been left to ponder the murkier, bacon-challenged, recesses of the canine soul.

Now that we've steamed through the Labour Day Weekend, a municipal election looms, and that other unreliable narrator is busily re-spinning his sorry-ass mayoral record to make it resemble something a touch less disastrous.

And rumours of a federal election, as always, flit about like, well, rumours in Ottawa. To decide whether one will actually happen, you'd have to look into the mind of the PM. Just try not to look too long or deeply. It's icky. But he can pull the imperial prorogue gag only once or twice before the electorate gags, so we may be safe for a bit, yet.

The problem as I see it is that no politician at the moment seems capable of lighting the kind of fire that gets people enthusiastic and behind the cause. Any cause. There seem to be no causes except narrow minded, partisan jockeying for position. Meanwhile, political offices at all levels are begging for candidates with, oh, actual charisma, intelligence and ideas that embody an authentic zeitgeist, ethos or what-have-you.

Oh, us coyotes will probably watch - and yowl - anyway. We always do. But more and more, all we're really hoping for is to hang on for the appearance of the actual bacon - some kinda inspiration that we can buy into. Meantime, we're resigned to a long, nasty, ill-defined lumpy-cream-of-wheat kinda autumn...

Successful-looking guys on spiffy bicycles...

2010-08-31T13:28:00.007-04:00

...even if they are impeccably turned out in natty, freshly-pressed office clothes, and even if they are riding one of those tall English limousine numbers, should probably consider not talking on their cell phones whilst they're riding up Elgin Street. During rush hour. With no hands. Through a red light.

While they do get minimal points for at least having the sense to wear a helmet during all of the above, I had to cover my eyes with my paws for a minute there. Us coyotes only enjoy anticipating violence of our own makin'.

I'm just saying...

Image: Courtesy Ski-Epic's Amsterdam Bicycles

Rabbit Ears

2010-08-26T22:29:00.010-04:00

I am curious about these dainties that I saw in a window display today.

Do you tuck the bow into your pants/skirt, or let it stick out over the waist band?

Is this the fashion that will replace the whale tail?

I suspect that Coyote will like that I am claiming dibs on naming the look, "rabbit ears".

My biggest fear...

2010-08-15T06:41:00.017-04:00

...upon hearing rumours last night that some poor, misbegotten, and likely well-muddled schmuck was apprehended sparkin' a, ummm, small puddle of undefined burning liquid on the sidewalk outside the Prime Minister's official residence at 24 Sussex, was that this obviously dastardly crime of national import would go unreported.

Whew! Glad that's been taken care of! (1) (2) (3) (...)

Now they can jug up said schmuck in a real prison instead of an unreported one. Or worse yet, instead of the mental hospital he most likely needs. Because now is obviously the time to get tough on crime...

Unless of course, it was Maclean's Magazine columnist Paul Wells... I'm just sayin'.

Alrighty, then! Let the judiciary commence with the important book-throwing formalities. Everybody else, back to your Sunday morning hangovers, crappy take-out coffees, and matching breakfast sandwiches!

Oh, hey, StatsFans!

2010-08-05T14:06:00.009-04:00

The statistic I'm most urgently concerned about right now is a disturbing spike in the unreported proportion of Canadians that think Stockwell Day is an unreported bonehead.

Not that we coyotes would ever resort to ad hominem slurs ourselves, y'understand...

Going mediaeval on our asses

2010-07-30T14:56:00.010-04:00

As a semimythical coyote, I recognise that mythical cosmogonies, including mine, may be internally consistent, yet correspond only roughly with what most people think of as reality. One side of the (mythical) line, I'm a totemic critter of some religious import. The other, I'm just a mouthy talking doggie with a sideline in eating your cat. Having had about 6,000 years' practice at being semimythical, I've learned to deal.

So it's with a practiced and critical eye that I watch the government attempt to build its own mythical cosmogony. You know, the one where empirical science never happened, and all must defer to the Prime Minister's gut. The one that spills out over the dinner-plate belt buckle he wears once a year at the Calgary Stampede, and tells him that basing decisions on actual facts is less desirable than just making crap up and calling it the truth.

Having had his mythical dogma (heh...) called out so often by the empirical facts on stuff like safe injections sites, mandatory sentencing, rising crime rates and blahblahblah ad nauseam, he's apparently started screwing over the people who collect these facts, such as Statistics Canada. Because nothing is more inconvenient than having your irrefutable gut feelings and cherished truthinesses shot to hell by your own government agency.

Give the guy credit. He and his base are doing their best to willfully ignore the entire Renaissance. You know, that insignificant 400-odd years when empirical science, ummm, evolved. Would they prefer the ignorance and superstition that came before? For an entire modern nation? How's that for going mediaeval on our asses?

As an over-opinionated quadruped with long experience in issues that rise when one's core beliefs reject the, you know, actual world in which you must exist, I gotta say: no matter how stubbornly you cherish that mythiness, sooner or later reality whacks ya upside the head. How's that for cognitive dissonance? And how ya gonna deal with it?

Item: 95+ to run for city council

2010-07-27T11:43:00.009-04:00

Fair enough. We need some new faces in the electoral race. But if they all show up in the same teensy-weensy car, I'm leavin'...

Lug nuts and the census

2010-07-23T06:24:00.013-04:00

So, even when faced with near-universal opposition, and even when the Chief Statistician quits in protest, the government has no problem trashing the mandatory census long form: "It's intrusive!!!! We're pandering to our loony fringe base, dammit!!!!"

So we coyotes will try to explain the issue in terms that make sense to the would-be defenders of this move, WHO ALWAYS SEEM TO FULL-CAP THEIR (OFTEN FURIOUSLY UNGRAMMATIC AND ANONYMOUS) FORUM COMMENTS: the lug nuts on that cherished Chevrolet half ton you use to earn your living.

Suppose your neighbourhood garage guys - call 'em Steve and Tony - say outta the blue that they want to replace all your lug nuts with Dodge lugs, because they think Chevy is arbitrary and intrusive for insisting on Chev lug nuts. Hell (they reason), Dodge lugs look pretty much the same, so no problem, right? Oh, and? Steve and Tony can pump gas, but neither's ever worked as a mechanic.

Would ya buy that, Durango? Nope. Because you, lug nut connoisseur that you are, know that Chev and Dodge lugs have different diameters, thread pitches and chamfers. Assuming they even sorta fit, those babies are gonna strip out, or leave wheel slop. Your wheels will come off, someplace inconvenient and possibly fatal.

There are a bunch of trucky things you could customize that, arguably, wouldn't wreck the ol' Silverado's utility: running boards, exhaust stacks, a big pair of them fine-looking chrome bull balls hanging off the trailer hitch. Dodge lug nuts, not so much.

Now, assume your pickup is a census. (It's a metaphor, Durango. Work with it.) See, reliable census information is Canada's business edge. Lotsa smart people rely on it to make sure the country as a whole can earn its living more efficiently. As every civilized country in the world aspires to.

A mandatory long form is intrusive, but a small price to pay for citizenship in this country you claim to love so much. Much like obeying stop signs at intersections. We work co-operatively toward common goals, unlike, say, those anarchists you hated so much at the G20. To do anything else is to court rump of skunk, and madness.

A voluntary long form is pretty much like Dodge lug nuts on your Chevy - doesn't match. Reading statistical trends properly makes tracking changes accurately over time really important. Even if you label the data you collect by the same name, changing the method you use to collect it means that you can't reasonably compare it with, well, anything that came before. The wheels come off. Just like that Chevy.

Now, I'm only a dumb coyote, so here are my questions: why would you trust an ill-fitting lug nut named Steve to change that? Why does Steve think some lug nuts are more equal than others? And why, if Steve keeps saying his opponents are unpatriotic and unCanadian, is it always him that seems hell-bent on changing this country, lug nut by lug nut, into something unrecognizable...?

Just askin'...

Emergency Meeting Minutes: 2010-07-19

2010-07-22T13:31:00.005-04:00

Venue: The Usual Spot
Present: 4th Dwarf, Woodsy, Aggie

1) Nobody blogging

It is noted that poor Coyote is carrying the blog and nobody else has blogged for weeks.

A: I would like to start again.

W: Me too, but I like to say “continue to blog”. It’s less negative.

4D and A agree.

A: Maybe using the camera is the key.

W: A picture with a couple of words is not so intimidating.

A: And maybe sketching...

Some discussion ensues about factors that limit blogging.

A: Then there’s perimenopause.

W: Or menopause, and 4D, how is your andropause?

4D: My andropause?

2) Vampires

A: Why are vampires so hot right now?

W: Because relationships suck?

Aggie groans. 4D pointedly does not.

A: Is it about gender power differences?

W: Huh?

A: In True Blood, vampires are an oppressed minority group, even though they are powerful beings. Like the white male narrative that they are now marginalized.

4D: Hmm. Maybe the Chair would like to come back to the blog as a vampire persona.

W: What is our official position on vampires?

4D: I don’t feel a need to have an official position.

W: What if Aggie and I do?

4D: [Shrugs and makes confusing hand gestures] Well... Why?

A: They seem to have taken on a cultural importance.

Some discussion ensues, but nothing is resolved on the vampire topic.

3) Coyote Carrying the Blog

A: Coyote is carrying the blog.

W: We should give him an award... Dinner and drinks from everyone else.

4D and Aggie agree and the motion is adopted by consensus.

A: Where is he?

W and 4D: It’s a mystery.

4) Back to Vampires

4D: Perhaps our official position on vampires could be reporting on who is not a vampire and who might be. For instance, our mayor Is not a vampire because he was captured on videotape outdoors during the day.

W: And we was married in a church.

A doesn’t seem to be fired up by this idea.

5) BOLO

A: Woodsy, how was Blog Out Loud Ottawa?

W: It was fun.

BREAKING NEWS: Conrad Black Appointed Head of Statistics Canada

2010-07-21T19:44:00.004-04:00

Long census form records to be stored in his car trunk, never to be seen by anyone, anywhere, ever...

Like Zoom says!

2010-07-19T12:55:00.009-04:00

Y'know, I've been watching the whole Census Long Form thing and thinkin' that the Prime Minister must be denser than a black hole to have decided to scrap it. Exactly what kind of hole that makes him is a subject for a whole 'nother post. I dogress.

Anyway, I'd lined up my arguments and was about to launch 'em into the near blogosphere when I happened upon Zoom's latest post over at Knitnut. You tell 'em, Zoom! Our personal styles might differ a little teensy bit, but in the particulars we agree. 100 per cent, as statisticians would say. If they weren't hobbled by idiotic governments...

Six AM on Nepean Point

2010-07-09T07:23:00.008-04:00

Nights, lately, we coyotes have spent on the move, too hot, too restless to sleep. At the end of one such, I dogtrotted to Nepean Point at sunrise. Near the base of Champlain's statue, I settled on my hind legs, panting a little, thinking to watch the shadows of the bridges shorten on the moving water.

"Nice view, isn't it?" said a near voice.

I was surprised. Not too many people actually see semi-mythical coyotes in this city. They usually dismiss us as figments of imagination. We encourage this, and in fact know a few small charms to help it along. This was an unusual person. I looked over my shoulder into a very tanned face with intelligent eyes.

"It is," I agreed, turning, taking in details of the man in the shade of the statue's plinth: clean copper-sand hair as dark and weatherbeaten as his skin, shabby-neat clothes, open book overturned beside him, indeterminate age, relaxed raffish air. In the growing brightness over his shoulder was Parliament Hill, clouds piling over it into a sky the same deep blue as his eyes.

"I like to catch the breeze off the river about this time of day," he offered.

"It's good," I agreed. "In this heat." I pointed my pointy nose into a scrap of moving air and sniffed gratefully.

"I like the heat," he said. "I spend six months a year cursing the cold."

Then, seeing I wasn't quite poised to flit, as we coyotes often are wont, he began to talk. He seemed have traveled and to know about minerals. He told stories about planting gardens in glacial sand deposits in the Arctic, of holding huge black onyxes in his hands, of illegally moiling for opals in the Australian outback, of diving for emeralds at the bases of South American waterfalls.

His current state suggested none had stayed in his hands, if ever he'd held them. He was obviously knowledgeable and intelligent, but there was hazy point in each story where the facts as I understood them seemed to drag their anchors and begin to drift.

It also might be that he was being completely truthful about the way he saw the world. I did not see fit to get into this. It might, I decided, seem a touch rich coming from a six-odd-millenia-old, semimythical talking dog. Who's not really from around these parts.

His stories had a humorous flair. He seemed serene about the wealth he did not have. He was amiable. I enjoyed his company. That was enough.

As the breeze died in the growing heat, I stood. He closed his book, placed it carefully into a battered pack, and uncoiled elegantly from the base of the statue. We walked companionably down the hill. At the bottom he wished me a very fine day. I wished him an equally fine day. He turned toward the Market, and I turned toward the alleys of Centretown.

It occurred to me as I re-entered the city's heated maze that many of the elite who sit in that fairy-tale Gothic-revival castle just across the bay, the one that had hovered over his shoulder while we spoke, probably wouldn't have much regard for my nameless new friend. I think that perhaps he wouldn't have much use for them, either...

Canada Day, 2010...

2010-07-01T07:25:00.004-04:00

...have a good one.

Facing the Evil Bunny Threat

2010-06-30T08:23:00.006-04:00

Call me fickle. Suddenly, I'm thinkin' of perambulatin' my coyote butt out to Victoria. I mean, better climate, (only slightly polluted) ocean air, and - huge bonus - it'd remove me geographically from the stroke-inducing antics of the surfeit of lame idiots infesting City Hall and The Hill. So, healthy move all 'round.

Oh, and, and speaking of surfeits, BUNNIES! Did I mention BUNNIES? It seems the University of Victoria administration has some kinda problem with several thousand of the cute li'l guys. Says they're a clear and present danger. Seems they, ummm, dig holes, and stuff.

Now, where the hell did I put the hot sauce? Pretty sure I can help with all of that...

Nice Tush

2010-06-24T22:10:00.010-04:00

I hear that Italy is out. What a shame - such a nice tush.

5.0 on the Richter scale, 1:41 P.M.

2010-06-23T19:41:00.006-04:00

A noise like the cliché freight train, a lot of office towers doing The Log Drivers' Waltz, a few busted chimneys, one or two possible cracked foundations. No major injuries in Ottawa, except to our egos after the West Coast started collectively hooting at us for even noticing 5.0.

Although a guy fishing off of a bridge near the epicentre in Quebec, about 50 kilometres north of here, did have to drive himself to the ER after the bridge sorta dropped out from underneath him...

Whaaaaaat?

2010-06-18T05:49:00.011-04:00

I just figured that, since Sun TV is gonna go all Foxic News North on us, it should have a classy new logo. The old one is as boring and dull as, ummm, the existing media that the new Putative Stun Channel hopes to thrash.

So, you know. Something restrained. Classy. Understated yet evocative. And with all the wit and public charm of its new, formerly pasty and now oddly-tanned executive guy, Kory Teneycke. Former Stephen Harper spokesthingy. Former Mike Harris backroom braintrust kid. Y'know?

But it wasn't easy. Endless concepts. Days of consultation with the Research Director. Multiple versions. Accusations of overthinking everything.

And locating a cuddly new mascot. You have no idea how hard it is to find a one-winged turkey vulture that can still, actually, you know, aviate in the solar wind...

Please...

2010-06-17T11:11:00.002-04:00

...make the angry wasps go away! For days, they've followed me everywhere I go, drivin' me crazy and causing me to beg complete strangers to stand ready with EpiPens®!!