Happy Quirky Alone Day...

...a Valentine's greeting from...

Dousing the lights on a lost decade

So HarperCo finally ends. Not with a bang, but with a concession speech full of rivet-gunned, recycled campaign boilerplate, all emotion carefully hollowed out of it.

Oh. And a flat little resignation letter to the titular brass of his party, released as an afterthought he saw unfit to mention to his few die-hards in Calgary, Monday night.

It was a microcosm of the parliamentary ummm, style, of the most divisive prime minister in Canadian history -- riding a rail of pre-scripted partisan bullshit talking points that admitted to no ill and willfully hid the main fact. So, as ever, contemptuous of most of his party and of the Canadian public.

Certain apologists tried to spin it as a classy move. It was not. It was an expedient way for him to avoid facing objective fact, unpleasantness and discomfit in public. He always had a hapless designated flunky answer for all bad stuff that happened on his watch in parliament, so he wouldn't have to.

It's been a long decade. The man broke a lot of stuff for the sake of breaking it, and because he could. He was uninterested in what he was breaking, or why it might be important. He tried to break more, but the courts stopped the most unconstitutional of it.

He never had much of a vision for the country once he got in, except to cater to The Base, also an ornery and smallminded bunch. They called themselves conservatives, but really, they weren't like any conservatives who came before. If they were conservatives at all, rather than some random posse who ganked a once-respected brand to sell snake oil.

A lot of reasonably intelligent pundits and media types, and the Canadian public, took an unconscionably long time to figure that out. I'm just glad that when they did, most of 'em knew what to do.

In common with almost all of the quasi-populist right-wing political movements out of southern and central Alberta -- the United Farmers, Social Credit, the Western Canada Concept, Reform, Wild Rose, ad infinitum, Harper greased himself into power on a toxic sludge of regional grudges. Unfortunately for for the rest of the country, he slid in further than anybody else ever had. As unfortunately, many of the grudges were rooted in willful ignorance and outright lunacy.

Most unfortunate of all, Harper, like Ted Byfield, that lunatic old King Lear of western alienation, wasn't actually born in the west at all. We semimythical coyotes are not sure what infinitely weird vapours lace the heady air of The Land Of Our People, but they seem to affect the johnny-come-lately immigrants -- who haven't been immunized since birth against their mania -- most grievously of all. I have seen a lotta crazy goin' down in the old stomping grounds in my six-thousand-odd years, but none more than among the newly-converted.

Just so ya understand why I was so appalled when Harper got his first minority ten years back. I know those guys. I know just how batshit insane they are...

Now, it is reported, the ex-PM and his wife will build a retirement bunker on property in the foothills near Cochrane, just west of Calgary. Good riddance. I hope they keep to themselves.

But since I am not without my fair share of imaginative schadenfreude, it tickles me to know he's where I can keep a baleful, glow-red-in-the-dark eye on him. And to imagine that he bought prime river-valley real estate. Say, on the mountain runoff flood plain that his own stubborn unwillingness to concede the fact of global warming has opened up to more of what used to be wallopin' 100-year floods. Now once a decade... until the Rockies lose their historic snow pack, anyway.

Not that I hold any kinda grudge.

Harper to Con-Vention: "Hey, come into the Kool-Aid Jacuzzi...!"

This weekend, ReformaTory faithful will finally gather in the cold light of post-Hallowe'en Calgary to convene triumphantly eat humble pie and consider their party's dubious future.

They might wonder, with cause, if the floods of biblical proportion (heh) that scrammed the original convention back in May were a dark portent. They might wonder, with cause, whether their god-like leader is actually a tin idol trying to smudge out a long series of sizable fibs with the kind of linguistic technicalities that allow him to think to his own self that he's still telling something resembling the truth. They might wonder, with cause, why, the tighter the PM squeezes down on message control the more crap squirts out between his fingers. They might wonder, with cause, why the hell the wheels are grinding off of their deadly bus. They might wonder, with cause, whether the foundation of their strong stable Conservative majority, ummm, moral certitudes, is become purest runny Jello.

They might. Some of the more prominent rats in and around the old blue machine are blinking nervously in the harsh glare of unaccustomed daylight. But they have not quite yet broken into full disorderly retreat. I digress. Slightly.

So it seems more likely that most of The Base may grudgingly accept their leaders' slightly sweaty and trembling invitation to ignore that distracting senate scandal (among myriad others...) and take a flying leap long, warm bubbly soak in the party's patented Kool-Aid Jacuzzi. And feel free to drink a little of it. Actually a lot.

It may help those base delegates to ignore the even baser clouds of flying monkeys in short pants PMO kids. who will be frantically trying to winch together both their crumpled leader's mojo and the tattered curtain that they would really, really like to be shrouding the unpleasantness of Duffster*uck.

It might work. . . because, you know, those amoral, lying lefties ain't fit to run the country.

On the other hand, they might just be left with a bad aftertaste, and the nagging suspicion that 'somebody' very senior in the Prime Minister's Office has been peeing copiously into the hot tub, all along. . .

They might.

Science-y newsflash: coyote finds Dog Particle

Yep, it's in there. Look hard.

Summer Solstice

For those of you that don't know what to buy your very favourite - indeed, your only* - blog-coyote-about-town as a thoughtful and much appreciated summer solstice gift, may I suggest a Doggie IQ Test? Only £4.99! With the small stipend for 'super fast delivery', you might still make it by tonight, if you hurry! And after all of this damnable rain, I'm pretty sure it'll bring me a very welcome little ego boost.

If you figure I'm already smart (ass) enough, and don't need further excuses to tap my full potential in that area, I'm also completely open to the Stylophone or the intriguingly fluorescent Space Putty, suggested as alternatives further down the catalogue page. But be forewarned that paste-on smile for pugs is a non-starter.

Meantime, I suggest that everybody reading this start flushing your minds right now of any and all mental images of certain Irregulars dancing naked around their gas barbecues tonight. Down that road lies rump of skunk, and madness. 'Kaythxgbye!

*This town, anyway. Wandering Coyote has the Southern BC franchise sewed up.

Image: Captain Cripple and his K9 Companion Skipper the Wonder Dog

Ask Frank

As part of their expanding public service mandate, the ESIs are proud to offer an insightful new advice column. None other than The Chairman of the Board himself will take all manner of questions and solve vexing problems.

Q: Hey Frank, I over-contributed to my RRSP last year and now my taxes are a mess. Please help.

A: Whoa, sounds like someone had a bangup year at the craps table! Doncha worry, my friend. Sammy had the same problem with the IRS boys back in '68. Here's what ya gotta do. Go to the Canada Revenue Agency website. Download one of them T3012A forms. Fill 'er out. Now getchyer mitts on a T-1 ADJ schedule. Attach it all together and send the whole whack of stuff off to the taxman. Yeah, I know. It all sounds kinda complicated. But soon you'll be scoobydooing your way back to the roulette wheel. Got it, fella?