The "Stereotypical Canadian Boor-Hick" Test

How do you know if you're a stereotypical hockey-playing Canadian? When a beer company brands you as such, that's how. Here's an advertisement I found in the Club Abstract bathroom. It annoys me.



I crave the approval of a beer company's ad campaign, so here is how I measure up to their concept of "Canadian."

* I don't drink beer very often, but if I did I would certainly replenish "the cooler" (because we all drink beer in the woods, eh?).

* I don't talk during another country's national anthem, but I also don't go to places where national anthems are played (not because I don't like anthems but because I don't like those sorts of placed).

* I most certainly DO shave below the neck, wow!

* I have shoveled my neighbour's driveway, but only because she made me feel guilty about it.

* I do not consider it a bad thing to talk about work on a long weekend (during which, of course, I am always in the woods drinking beer out of a cooler, eh?).

* Jesus, no, I have not "made a ball out of hockey tape" (this is the point in the test when I start to get annoyed)

* I don't hang around gym showers, but no, I wouldn't pee in one. I DO know that some people think it's okay to pee in their OWN showers, however, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

* Yes, I always say "sorry" when people bump into me. Of all these stupid stereotypes this is probably the most accurate.

* Why would I have my fingers behind my back? What sort of sneaky jerk do you think I am? I don't know what this one means but it sounds childish and stupid.

* If I were to EVER "cheer for a goal" I'm sure I wouldn't spill anything, because -- you know -- I am not an infant.

* The last time I was "the goalie" was when I was six, and that was because my sister knew it would hurt more.

* I agree...the driver should pick the music.

* Have I ever "thrown a hat on the ice?" Which ice is that? Is this a stupid hockey thing again? I don't wear hats and -- if I did -- I would respect them too much to just throw them around.

* I will happily end an email with a smiley face. :)

* Yes, I do put a loonie on the pool table to claim the next game.

* It would be silly to NOT bring utensils on a camping trip out of some general principle of "Canadian-ness." Do Canadians tend to eat with their hands? I guess only when they're in the woods, making a ball out of hockey tape and replenishing the cooler.

* I'm doubly Canadian because I help strangers out of snowdrifts and then agonize about my motivation for doing so.

* You should ALWAYS get in the lineup with the most competent cashier. At the local Valu-Mart there are two cashiers who are positively GLACIAL, and even if they only have one person in their line I'll always choose a different cashier...and I always get out first.

* I will not respond to any statement which contains the word "dudes." My annoyance has bubbled over, yo.

* No...I don't need lighter fluid to start a fire, in the woods, with the cooler etc.

* If my "buddy" is not allowed into a bar for a reason which I think is silly, I will happily go elsewhere. If my buddy isn't allowed in because he has a behavioural problem, however, I will stand and cheer as the bouncers kick him down the ramp and into the parking lot.

The Great Duckling Rescue of 2008

Every year a stupid duck decides to lay her eggs outside my workplace. This would be fine if she weren't laying them in a ten-foot-high concrete planter that the ducklings can't climb out of; safe from predators, yes, but a deathtrap for tiny things that have yet to learn to fly.

In the past, many of the ducklings have either died in the planter or managed to escape only after the mother had given up, becoming dinner for local crows and cats. Their pitiful peeping cries were a terrible thing to hear. I couldn't stand it anymore.

So 2007 saw the inauguration of the first annual Great Duckling Rescue.

The problem with the GDR is that the planter is full of thick evergreen shrubs that have been growing for eight years; now they're an impenetrable, spiky mess. Under this the ducklings run hither and yon while myself and a brave volunteer get sliced to bits by evergreen thorns, trying to simultaneously hold the rigid stems away from the ground and catch tiny little things that run away at 30kph. In 2007 we also dealt with a dive-bombing mama duck, though this year she stood politely aside while we did our rescue operation.



Apparently we saved fifteen ducklings this year. Before you say "wow, that's a lot of eggs!" let me point out that two more babies died instantly upon hatching, and another two eggs just never hatched at all (I guess my cubicle wasn't a very good incubator).

Some of my fellow employees think I'm crazy; their objections range from "survival of the fittest" (are we preserving a "stupid nesting behaviour gene" in the duck population?) to "nature is cruel" (yes, I know). Sorry, I can't just sit there and listen to animals die.

The day wasn't all downy sweetness, however; when I first climbed into the planter I think I stepped on a slow duckling and broke its neck. It was alive for far too long as we rescued its brothers and sisters...I won't go into details because it was pretty awful. But the rest of the birds seemed pretty happy, and when the mother walked away she was literally floating on a hovercraft of little bustling animals.

How she's going to PROVIDE for that brood is another matter.

The Muffypod Takes a Powder

I have a love-hate relationship with my iPod; I love the convenience of it, but I deplore what it has done to my concept of music.

I used to view a song as part of an entire album, just a piece of a larger work, a work that consisted of both exceptional and substandard songs. Now, for me, a song is an isolated object. My patience for album-listening has gone down. These days I tend to listen to songs on "shuffle" instead.

On Saturday night my MuffyPod became suddenly corrupted. They always tell you not to unplug iPods when they're doing "busy stuff" on your computer, but in my experience the MuffyPod will sometimes do "busy stuff" until the cows come home (and then the cows get angry because they can't shut it off either). So I'll occasionally rebel against convention by unplugging my iPod when I shouldn't, and by doing so I have totally trashed the poor thing, leaving me with 864 songs out of the 12,000 that used to be on there.

This was my first (somewhat childish) emotional response:



Then I got greedy.

"Hey, why bother uploading all those songs back into this piddly 6oGB iPod...I should just buy a 160GB one instead!"

Yes, but...

"Why commit myself to years of uploading songs using a USB 1.0 port...it's REALLY time to upgrade my computer! I actually need to buy a new iMac!"

Yes, but...

"If I buy a new iMac, I shouldn't splurge on a brand new iPod right away...I'll get the iMac first -- next weekend, probably -- and then buy a new iPod somewhere down the road."

So you see how I've convinced myself that the failure of my iPod actually justifies the purchase of a WHOLE NEW COMPUTER. And it really DOES make some sort of sense, or at least it would if I hadn't just bought a car and if I actually had a piece of furniture to put the new computer ON.

Thanks, MuffyPod...your legacy will be credit debt and a brief return to "album-oriented" song appreciation. The god of technology works in mysterious ways.

Zsa Zsa Becomes Famous for Her Strength and Her Bum

I always knew that Zsa Zsa was destined for super-stardom, but I wasn't quite sure how until now:

News article with Zsa Zsa picture.

(I'm not sure how NowPublic works exactly, so the picture of Zsa Zsa's butt might not be the secondary image when YOU look at the page).

Scrutable Poetry Corner: "Dowager"

In keeping with our commitment to totally unambiguous poetry, here's "Dowager" by Ruth Brown.

They used to call her "Kitty" when
She frolicked in the nineties. Men
Still make her flutter helplessly;
Her kind of femininity
Is at its best behind a fan.
Although she's fat she never can
See any sense in dieting--
Her friends say, "Poor old lonely thing!
We must invite her here for dinner,"
And then forget, while she waits in her
Hotel apartment hopefully
With photographs for company.

I generally enjoy Brown's poetry in The New Yorker, but I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about her; she only contributed between 1928 and 1929, and I can't find any online references to her (since she is not the blues singer of the same name).

Right to Life Parade

Just in case you missed the annual K-W Right to Life parade, don't cry, I watched it for you. It happened last Saturday and seemed to last from 10:26 to 10:27 am. I got a little bored at the halfway point -- I was on my way to breakfast, after all -- but at least I could keep them all in my vision at the same time.

For some reason they had balloons. Maybe they wanted to make it look like there were more people.

"The Canadian Settler's Guide"

Society is hanging by a thread. As the movies keep reminding us, all we need is a nuclear war, a viral outbreak, a terrorist strike, or a polar bear attack to bring all of our modern machinery to a shuddering halt. We are literally inches away from the stone age, and I don't mean the kind of stone age where we wear fur bikinis and fight dinosaurs. I mean the kind where we all die because we're too stupid to know how to make our own bread.

I picked up Catherine Parr Traill's "The Canadian Settler's Guide" because, after the zombies bring down our entire fragile infrastructure, I want to lend a helping hand when the time comes to reconstruct the world. I want to offer more practical knowledge than just how to boil Kraft Dinner and accentuate a lip-line.

The fact that you can't grow insulin in a garden sort of makes my whole plan moot anyway, but I want to AT LEAST build a whipsaw and plant some cabbage before I die.

So Traill's book -- written for the new 1855 Canadian immigrant -- has proved helpful. I now understand the importance building a veranda around even the meanest hovel, and I know one should keep the chickens in a coop while one is planting the crops. I have learned the best way to prepare fried corn (boil it first) and how to make a tasty beer out of beets. I could, if pressed, make a rag rug or a candle or a delightful pigeon pie, and I could tell you how many bricks a yard of clay will make (460), and I could even recite a verse of "The Scottish Immigrant Song":

The little gowans tipped wi dew
That 'mang the grass shone brightly;
The harebell waving in the breeze
That bowed its head sae lightly.

When Mrs. Traill devoted a section of the book to "the ague," however, I had to chuckle. "Oh those simple Victorian people, mistaking food poisoning or a tight corset for some mysterious vapor-disease." Little did I know that -- holy cow! -- malaria was a serious problem in Ontario throughout the 1800's. No wonder a spoonful of Epsom salts didn't help.

So when the world comes crashing down, feel free to stay with me for a little while. We'll have a quilting bee, clear some land, and dig a pit to put the potatoes in. But now that I know where rennet comes from, YOU can make the cheese.

The Food Canal

With much thanks to Fleishmann's Yeast -- a product consumed by those who REALLY think that their bad breath starts in their intestines -- here's a confused young man and his stomach:

Thanks, confused young man!

High Noon at Six P.M.

It was the first warm day in weeks. Zsa Zsa had been begging to go outside. After dinner, at 6pm, I strapped her in her harness and we sat on the porch.

Zsa Zsa was thrilled. She descended the steps into the back yard and ate some grass. I read my book and luxuriated in the sunlight. Everything was good.

Suddenly I became aware of the unnatural stillness. Zsa Zsa had bunched herself up and her ears were flat, and she was staring at a shape creeping around the corner.

Penny. The neighbourhood tough-cat. The little town terror. Come for a fight.

We froze into a silent tableau, the three of us, staring. The cats began to vocalize, coaxing strange moans out of their throats. These moans would start low and then cycle up into looping howls, gaining in volume, interspersed with hisses and alpaca spits.

Penny began to move, making slow ninja steps around the edge of Zsa Zsa's reach. The howls grew louder, their hackles rose, I was witness to a kitty showdown the likes of which I had never hoped to see.

I wondered: should I interfere? Penny was twice the size of Zsa Zsa and she's used to fighting in the wilderness, but I didn't want to wound Zsa Zsa's pride by pulling her inside; maybe she could do it. Maybe she could win. Maybe I should let her try.

Stillness.

A twig snapped.

STRIKE! Penny lunged and battered Zsa Zsa with her paws. Zsa Zsa got a few pitiful swipes in and then she turned and ran, back up the porch, the battle lost. Once again Penny was victorious.

I jumped up and chased Penny away. Zsa Zsa was not wounded but she had entered a mind-altered state, growling and hissing in consternation and shame. When she had calmed down a bit I inspected her for wounds, then picked her up and put her back on the battleground, thinking this might bring some of her confidence back. She hunkered down and growled, hissed, howled, hackled.

Ten minutes later she was back inside and meowing for treats. She may not remember the conflict but *I* have learned a lesson. Next time Penny approaches my cat, I'm going to punch her in the nose.

"Love and Truth" at the TICOT St. Patrick's Day Fundraiser

In March I went to Toronto to participate in a St. Patrick's Day TICOT fundraiser. I've already blogged about the joys of the trip, but here's a snippet of one of the numbers I performed ("Love and Truth" by Mother Mother), filmed by Craig and uploaded by Morgan James.

Those two ultra-sweeties also send me a DVD containing a full version of the other number I did (which I'll upload soon), along with a collection of additional cool and surprising stuff. Do you have friends who unselfishly send cool things through the mail? I hope so, especially if they send them to me!

Incidentally, this clip uses a new relativistic video process...since it travels near the speed of light you'll notice that the colour of my dress changes depending on my motion relative to yours. I've always wanted to be red-shifted!