What's My Sign?

After the city's long recovery from "Technically Beautiful" (rightly) being laughed out of the park a decade back, Ottawa's National Capital Commission is again on the hunt for a new city slogan. Ummm, an official one.

The old one, you will recall, left itself hanging wide open to the fair and obvious question, "If you're only technically beautiful, what are you, really?"

After that fail - the poor thing only absorbed about four months' hooting before it crawled, whimpering, battered and bloody, into a dumpster - the NCC's committee thumbsuck will, no doubt, be epic.

The Petfinder's business columnist sees this as a problem. He's probably right. First, because these guys are mostly business-oriented, and figure the slogan to attract business. Yawn! Second, committees above a certain size - and you can count on this committee being above a certain size - level creativity into radioactive wastelands anyway. Members fancy themselves creative with a certainty that, mathematically, works out to be the inverse of their actual abilities. Cubed.

Oh, they consult. They collect options. Then one of a couple of things happens: One is that they each champion something different. In the inevitable verbal brawls, some peacemaker suggests that fatal word, "compromise", so they take what looks like a promising slogan, and keep grafting on bits of other, lamer, ones until the thing is DOA. But everybody on the committee can boast about their "important input". The other is that they quickly, ecstatically agree on the absolute lamest option, then skeeve off to Hy's for celebratory expense-account triple scotches.

On that note, I want y'all to know that us coyotes are creative. With a certainty that, mathematically, works out to be the inverse of our actual abilities. Cubed. And our fave slogans are, in no particular order:

• Ottawa: Funner Than Stephen Harper's Sex Life!
• Ottawa: Not Enough Porta-Potties on Canada Day!
• Ottawa: Not Fucking Toronto!

But our committee is soliciting as many other options - with exclamation points to punch 'em up - as possible. Triples all 'round!