The Breadbin

Sometimes I hate the Internet.
On my daily Reddit-crawl in search of a nice, neat meme to wrap up this tumultuous year, I came across this article concerning the Yellowstone Caldera. "Is A Volcan0 Big Enough To Cause An Ice Age Really About to Blow Its Top?"
There's the kind of headline that can really put some shit in your pants, you know what I mean? And then you read the article, which basically concludes well, we don't know for sure, but hey! it kinda looks like it (last line: "our civilization has now entered the geological interval of maximum eruption risk")...the shit just keeps on coming! Look, it's shit creek! Where's the padd--oh, shit!
Calm down, have some dip. Consider how odd it is that this isn't all over the news like an earthquake swarm. (I caught the coverage of the earthquake swarm last week, and thought humph, eruption comin' up. Didn't realize Yellowstone Caldera was quite that large.)  Note that, while Yellowstone is con…

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog, from my annual Christmas trip to see my dad and stepmom. As always, I had a wonderful time. I saw The Secret on DVD (blog entry forthcoming: suffice it to say I went into it scathingly sceptical and came out something of a convert). A blast from my distant past came in the form of Aggravation. And I got plenty of rest, relaxation, and hockey-watching in. There's something about the air along the shores of Georgian Bay that relaxes and rejuvenates. Would that I could have imported some of that Georgian air back with me...
Okay, that sentence demands some explanation.Well, a great deal of it, actually (sorry)...Eva didn't come up with me, for the same reasons I didn't accompany her to her parents' place Christmas Eve...reason one being Tux and reason two being Georgia-Peach. 
We're simply uncomfortable with the idea of boarding our two furry children. With good reason: we tried it at Thanksgiving and Peach escaped from her pen (surp…

From our house to yours, a tradition: Dave Cooks The Turkey. (audio file: runs 21:50 or so). 

The Vinyl Cafe and its host Stuart McLean are Canadian treasures. Over six hundred thousand people tune in each weekend, and countless more download the podcast. McLean hosts his program from a new location every week, and by now has hit practically every community in the country. He makes everywhere he goes seem like somewhere you might want to move to, giving loving descriptions that focus on the human element. He also showcases up-and-coming Canadian musical talent: several of the people featured on the Cafe have gone on to win awards and achieve that kind of obscure fame that is, like the Vinyl Cafe itself, uniquely Canadian.
For most of us, though, the highlight of the show is a new Dave and Morley story almost every week. Dave runs a little record store, the eponymous Vinyl Cafe, whose motto is "we may not be big, but we're small." He and his wife Morley have two children--p…

The other night, an odd zizzing snap-crackle-popping  emanated from my monitor. The screen commenced to blink on and off and the campfire sounds intensified. There was a mad scramble for the power switch: I've got a fireplace screensaver...I don't really want to see my screen become a fireplace.
RIP Benq 17" monitor (2004-2008).

A couple of months ago, my wife's laptop keyboard threw its u...just like an old typewriter. The keycap was adhered back into place, but the connection was dodgy and the key wobbled a bit. She soldiered on with the thing for eight weeks, trying mightily (the way I am right now) to avoid typing that vowel. Eventually (like I just did), she succumbed.
RIP Toshiba laptop (2007-2008).
For a while, a couple of years back, we had two coffee makers in our kitchen sitting cheek by jowl: a black one for regular morning java and a white one for decaf. That was before we'd taken on enough coffee to understand there's no sane place in the world for de…

Much has been made of the recent survey (pdf) by Ipsos-Reid for the Dominion Institute, showing that many Canadians are appallingly ignorant of even the most basic Canadian political facts. The findings are damning: over half those polled believe we directly elect the Prime Minister (wrong) and a shocking three quarters of respondents said our head of state is either the Prime Minister (wrong) or the Governor-General (closer, but still wrong). Only six in ten knew that Canada is a constitutional monarchy (the other two-fifths described us as either a representative republic (which is what the U.S. is) or a co-operative assembly (a null term, politically, and it sure doesn't fit our current House of Commons!)

As anyone who has ever voted in, or indeed lived through, a federal election should be able to tell you, Canadians do NOT elect a Prime Minister directly; we vote for local Members of Parliament. Our head of state is in fact the reigning monarch in Britain, currently Her Majest…

I read somewhere recently that in America, 88% of Republicans prefer 'Merry Christmas' to 'Happy Holidays', compared to just 57% of Democrats. No shock there, given that much of the Republican base is ardently Christian. 
I don't understand the hullabaloo this raises every...single...year. Hey, atheists: the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't itching to send you to the Salad Bar of Eternal Damnation because you dared to wish your Christian neighbour a Merry Christmas. Likewise, Christians: there are, gosh darn it, people of other faiths, or no faith, celebrating other holidays at this time of year. Heck, you do it yourself: it's called New Year's. So 'Happy Holidays', while including others, isn't excluding you.
Secular humanists: it's called a Christmas tree. Not a "holiday tree" or a "seasonal tree": a Christmastree. You don't call it a "holiday menorah", do you?
Christmas bemoaning the deChristification of t…

I've been meaning to do this post for a long time, ever since I first heard Brad Paisley's "Letter To Me" last year. If I had to compile a list of my favourite songs of all time (and I wouldn't even want to try), this one would rank at, or near, the top.It starts off if I could write a letter to me and send it back in time to myself at seventeen...
Seventeen. 1989. Grade 11. I don't live in the past any more, my present is far too lovely for that...but when I did, 1989 was the year I flashed back on more than any other. Events that came much later are blurry or completely lost to memory, but much of that particular year I can recall vividly if I choose to.
I was in love, for one thing. I'd had little cases of puppy love before that dating all the way back to third grade (I never went through any kind of girls-are-icky stage)...but this was the whole kennel. I'd known this woman since she sauntered into my music class in September of 1987, wearing a denim…

I've had a nickname since I was two years old...or perhaps even younger: Macaw. I was so christened by my father because, he said, "all I ever did was squawk and shit." Oddly, despite the ignominous origin, I don't mind being called Macaw. It beats being 'Kenny', anyway...I haven't been 'Kenny' since fourth grade and to be honest, that -y suffix makes me feel like a child every single time.I got thinking about this after Rocketstar mentioned how much he detests songs with 'Baby' in the title. This post sent me scurrying to my iTunes library, of course. A search on 'Baby' yielded five matches (out of almost 700):
"Shoo Shoo Baby"--The Andrews Sisters "So Not My Baby"--Josh Turner "My Baby Loves Me Just The Way That I Am"--Martina McBride "My Baby Loves A Bunch of Authors"--Moxy Fruvous "Baby I'm Home"--Trace Adkins
Three country tunes, an old '40s swingtime standard, and rollicking…

Better a prorogued Parliament than a Parliament of rogues.
(Am I the only person who thinks the lot of them should be standing in the corner for the next seven weeks?)
Surprised Jean decided on this course. I wonder what Harper said to her to get her to agree. It seems to me this sets a dangerous precedent. Any time a leader is facing a non-confidence motion (s)he can just hit the suspended animation button. 
Now it's a battle of wills. How coalitious is that coalition? Can it last seven weeks in stasis? (I'm betting yes.) Will Harper come back at all chastened? (I'm betting no.) Will we be reliving this come Groundhog Day? (Aside: isn't Harper a hell of a lot like Bill Murray's character in that movie? at least early on?)

For now. Wait a few hours, it'll change again.
Watching the PM-for-now on TV last night, I was struck by how meek he sounded. Things have spiralled up and out of his control so quickly. This is a man, remember, who relishes control, who craves it, who can never have enough of it. Every moment of the last election campaign was elaborately scripted. Every statement by the least member of the CPC must meet with Harper's approval before it's allowed to be uttered.  But now--whodathunkit?--a Liberal Party that can't agree on anything meaningful, with a leader so spineless he makes amoebas look rigid, somehow cobbled together a coalition with a whole other party in the space of a week...and is making it stick. So what does Harper do? Back down? Hell, no! He's out there telling Dion, buddy, I can outpiss you without unzipping. Dion's saying dis way to the pissoir, ami. And a pair of grown leaders are engaging in a giant pissing match, when last I looked, there's gov…

So the coalition of the willing is ready to go.

Well, good for the Liberals and NDP for coming together. But is it good for Canada?

Progressives--the majority of Canadians, if you believe most polls--will dismiss the question: the answer is self-evident. I'm not so sure.
While I recognize that this is a legitimate way to proceed in our parliamentary democracy, I'm just not comfortable with a transfer of power without an election. There is a complete lack of transparency towards the Canadian electorate here. Anyone care to guess what Dion and Layton have cooked up as regards an economic stimulus package?  (Is "economic stimulus package" only a fancy term for "flushing money down the toilet"?)
Do we have the slightest idea what our foreign policy will look like once "Taliban Jack" has had a go at it? Given that Liberal supporters deserted Dion in droves six scant weeks ago, how it is he's suddenly poised to become Prime Minister?
And another thing. T…