.
And isn’t nearly grateful enough.
h/t

I don’t run these very often, but this was too good to pass up;

(Adrian Wyld/CP)

A Liberal MP plans on bringing back “meals” of seal meat from the Newfoundland hunt. Then, apparently, he plans on feeding it to fellow parliamentarians..
Allow me the privilege of quoting myself from a post directed to the anti-seal hunt propagandists, written on April 6, 2004, in which I remark on this creature so conspicuously absent from the Canada Food Guide.

They’re parasite infested 350 lb water rats.
They taste like rancid codfish.
Yes, they do.
You’ve never eaten seal meat.
I have.
They are also hugely responsible for massive declines in fish stocks. What the hell did you think they ate? Seaweed? Fish, which – in case you haven’t noted – is high on the menu at your favorite sushi bar.
In fact, if seal didn’t taste like rancid codfish, it would be on the menu at your favorite sushi bar.

In the spirit of non-partisanship, I offer this advice to Members of Parliament from all parties; do yourselves a tremendous favour. If there is even the most remote of possibilities that Mr. Russell may follow through on this made-for-photo-op taste test – be away that day. Claim the stomach flu. Dead Aunt. Food allergy, if you must.
Supporting the seal hunt is an important political issue in Canada, to be sure.
But is this the swill you want to die on?

Amazing.

Something doesn’t ring true about this story from Edmonton;

An Edmonton elementary school has a new policy on washroom breaks and has revised an old policy on recess.
This, after a Grade Two student was sexually assaulted in the girls bathroom during morning recess yesterday by a man hiding in a stall.
Officials at the Oliver School are ordering all students to go to the bathroom in pairs.
[…]
Carlson says it appears the girl was groped and that her only physical injury is a bump on the head.

It doesn’t ring true because of the location and the extreme degree of risk. A school washroom is a trap in more ways than one – they’re not only single exit rooms, they’re single exit rooms inside a building with hundreds of potential witnesses. Help is only feet away. And, while there’s a high likelihood of finding a victim in his preferred age range, there’s low likelihood of finding one a lone, vulnerable one. Girls tend to travel in pairs or packs, and the appearance of a male in a girls washroom would elicit instant alarm – shrieks – from little girls. Anyone as familiar with the habits of young children as a pedophile brazen enough to grab a girl in broad daylight should know all of these things.

The girl was attacked around 10:15 a.m. Monday as she stopped to use the washroom on the way out to the playground during morning recess at Oliver School, just west of Edmonton’s downtown.
“An unknown male approached her from one of the stalls in the girls’ bathroom, dragged her into the stall and sexually assaulted her,” police spokesman Jeff Wuite said.
The school, which houses students from kindergarten to Grade 9, was locked down for about two hours after the incident while police confirmed the suspect was no longer on the premises.

The reports I’ve heard indicate the only witness was the child herself. Unless the alleged molester was very young and “new” to the game, or of diminished mental capacity, the high-risk behavior described in this story doesn’t make a lot of sense.

From a reader, who explains;

I found the following inscription printed on the inside cover of a text book I found which looks like it was from the 1930’s

It was issued by the Government of British Columbia’s Education Department.

(I’ve copied the text in the extended entry for those who find the image difficult to read.)

Continue reading →

Bill Ardolino;

Goodbye, sweet Chicken Little. Charitably, you’ve got about a 3-month window to apply that fast fading fame towards ditching the cloying albatross of your 16 year-old man-cherry. All else failing, I’m fairly positive that you could at least round second base with Paula if you catch her on one of her charitable xanax and seabreeze nights.
NOW GO!

On Monday, February 27, 2006, 1 p.m. EST, CPAC will broadcast the interview of Mr. Justice Rothstein by the Ad Hoc Committee to Review a Nominee for the Supreme Court of Canada. SLAW has assembled a comprehensive set of links to key news, commentary, government websites, and extensive court decisions by Mr. Justice Rothstein. “The Marshall Rothstein Pages” marks a first in Canada: SLAW’s page is the most timely and comprehensive resource on any Supreme Court candidate.
SLAW has included a list of ten qualities the nominee brings to the Supreme Court and a break-down of how some of his decisions at the Federal Court level fared later at the Supreme Court level, whether upheld or overturned. Readers across Canada have been invited to submit questions they would like to see asked of Mr. Justice Rothstein in Monday’s session.

SLAW main page is here.

I’ve never paid much attention to American Idol – I don’t think I caught any of the shows last season. But, with little else on the tube, I caught a few episodes from the first round of raw auditions, not expecting much more than the usual oddball collection of William Hung wanna-be’s and foul-mouthed delusional divas.
Then, this Taylor Hicks guy walks into the room.
Holy crap, he’s good.
Being on dialup, I’m not inclined towards sitting through video downloads – but if you’re curious, there may be someting here at 2:55 minutes (Thanks BB for directions to the link.)

I can’t get bent out of shape over the men’s hockey loss. It’s sport. It didn’t escape my notice however, that some of the same people who whined over the dominance of the Canadian womens team (and how that undermined the legitimacy of women’s hockey) are now bitter that the mens team didn’t dominate in their division. Come again?
Had Canada won 7 of the last 8 Olympic meetings with the Russians/USSR, instead of the other way around, one might make a case for the blindly accepted mythology of “Canadian hockey supremacy”. But they haven’t, and the days when Canadians dominated the sport in terms of sending players to the NHL are long past.
So, what’s my opinion on what went wrong? Well, first – the mythology that just wearing a maple leaf bestows hockey players with a supernatural force is unhelpful. The “nothing less than gold will do” attitude is not only psychologically burdensome for any athelete – it isn’t supported by the historical record. Perhaps we should first win a few more of those glittery yellow trinkets before demanding “nothing less”.
Secondly, and more importantly, I think the fact that there are preteens playing with equipment designed and priced for the pros says something about misplaced priorities (and expectations) in the development of minor hockey players in Canada. Come to think of it – I live between a high school and a rink. I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid go down my sidewalk carrying his own hockey equipment.
“Mom, come pick me up”.
(I’d also say something about the mindset of hockey parents who buy custom paintjobs for the goalie masks of 10 year olds, but … eh …. not going there.)
Anyway, just a few thoughts to get discussion going among the real experts. Open thread.

It’s a quiet weekend at home for me for the holidays. One of my dogs announced in October that what she wanted most for Christmas was puppies – and so I am thus obliged to tend these ungrateful wee dogs in the manger, forfeiting the usual trip home to the farm to visit family.
Something is amiss, and it’s not the aroma of roasted turkey, new John Deere dress gloves or the delighted squeals of last year, when my young nephews ripped apart gladly coloured paper to reveal the soft glint of hatchet blades – a gift from their grandfather. “You’ll have to take those to school…”. It’s not the look in the eyes of their overwhelmed mother.
It’s not the endless family debates, nor the table decorated with festive spirits and their various mixes, or losing at crib, or the clatter of croquinole combat in the living room.
No, what I miss tonight is the intoxicating scent of two-stroke exhaust, the blue-tinged combustion of premix. It’s been unseasonably warm, the snow has melted and with it the unapologetic roar of Arctic Cats and Polaris’ and Yamahas from the streets (and sidewalks) of our small town.
The quiet delivers me back to a time when we spent a cold Christmas eve layered in underwear and sweaters and snowmobile suits. With visiting cousins on board, we pulled loud engines to life to surf across unfenced farmland and up frozen creeks. Stopping in the shelter of a poplar bluff, the Skidoo and Snow-Jet would wait like patient sleek horses while we snapped branches from sleeping trees for a fire. With boots drying in the heat, we warmed our toes, taking turns from a thermos of Kahlua-spiked cocoa while weiners sizzled on coathanger twigs.
We rode at speed and without destination, shattering the dark night air on the strength of a single headlight and the confidence gifted to teenagers. We rode without helmets, without compass and without fear, protected by daylight recall of fence lines and drainage ditches and farm equipment lurking in the snow.
The snow in Saskatchewan falls horizontally. Where the fields are bare and open to the wind, it forms in concrete-hard waves which, when taken at speed, lift roaring machines into air and launch disgruntled jackrabbits from their nervous safety in the leeward hollows of the drifts.
As the evening deepened and we tired of fruitless lupine harassment, we’d take a final turn to the south and away from the hard drifts and the anchoring lights of the distant farmyard to a field that rises to a gentle plateau from where one can see all the way to the northern horizon. With a turn of the key, the big machines would coast darkly to rest on a crisp bed of powder captured from the wind by stalks of wheat stubble.
There, with the warmth of calmed engines wasting into the night, we’d lay back upon the seats under the sudden silence of a hundred million stars and imagine we were lost.
Merry Christmas, one and all.

A million dollar donation to the victims of hurricane Katrina – and you’ll never guess from who.

Someone asked for an open thread on the CFL now that the league is entering playoffs. Ask, and ye shall receive.
One rule – no malicious gossip about the Roughriders’ linebacker Trevis Smith – it’s not only unfair, I don’t need to be sued.

Scott Brison tried to get away with a smear and wound up apologizing for it.
Both SDA and its commenters get mentioned in the Ottawa Citizen (no permalink — see Kinsella’s Nov 5 posting)
Liberals sinking like a rock in the polls. Meanwhile, Jack Layton is busy bending Martin over a sawhorse. The folks at Canada Free Press aren’t expecting an election any time soon.
The riots are spreading in France as Islamist wingnuts are still on the tear.
Cuts in community mental health programs and the reduction of available beds in psychiatric facilities has pushed more mentally ill people into our prisons.
CAW failed to unionize United Church clergy. I’m actually a bit disappointed over this as I would have had a lot of fun watching the uproar if they had succeeded.
Feel free to add your own news tips in the comments.

As promised, I have utilized the time honoured method of complete subjectivity to select the top five entries of the Paul Martin Caption Contest;
#5 – “I’m pleased to announce that Pamela Anderson will be lending her considerable assets to the Liberal party in the upcoming election”
– Posted by imnotaranoid
#4 – “And for a moment…just for a moment…I thought I had Harper by the balls!”
– Posted by Dr.Dawg
#3 – “I had a hand on each of the 2 solitudes. Clearly, something was up.”
– Posted by Plato’s Stepchild
#2 – “And I attach myself to the public teat thusly.”
– Posted by Guv
And the #1 caption:

“And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how I’m going to kiss Mr. Laytons ass this fall…”

Congratulations to Kevin of One Cup Too Many.

They don’t* make civil rights leaders like they used to.

Ashlyn Shaver finished second in the toilet seat lid toss. (No word yet on the results in the Arm Fart).

What are you thankful for today?

Ray of PolSpy fame came out to visit us at the new homestead for the last couple of days. I took a break from the Web comic and my personal blog so we could spend some quality time with our cameras (Ray is an accomplished photographer as well).
In two days I manged to produce just over thirty portfolio worthy images. Those who are interested in that sort of thing can find them here. (Top six rows plus the leftmost image on the seventh row.) Of particular interest are some pictures of the largest neo-gothic church in Alberta, a picture of the Monitor Mud Buttes (most people have never heard of them), and a capture of Ray happily destroying his brother’s old tax records.
Whew! That’s probably enough link-whoring for one day.

Apologies for not getting the Small Dead Blog Award voting up yet — I’ve been bogged down with a few personal items last night and this morning. I’m working on the voting post now and should have it done soonish (sometime today).