I wish my nephews were younger.

Suggest a new license plate motto for Ontario.

If your sky includes scenes like this…

You might be in Saskatchewan.

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah*

Best sung inside a helmet, laying on the tank, while riding the powerband through 5 gears.
Hallelujah.

If you check the seismic map, there has been a 7.2 mag earthquake near Honsho, Japan just over an hour ago.
Active map is here.
Google news has reports trickling in about injuries and a tsunami warning, but nothing over the local radio news at the moment.

SCENE 1

Interior shot of a backwoods cabin in rural Georgia. The room is tastefully decorated with Bruno Mathsson lounge chairs, Eero Saarinen side tables, a rebel flag and moonshine still. An old bearded man lies on a vintage midcentury Alvar Aalto death bed.

“ow”
Dr.Louie: “Are you ok?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Dr.Louie: “You want more freezing?”
Me: “Let’s see how it goes.”
Dr.Louie: “OK”
whhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrriiiiirrrrrrr “ow”
Dr.Louie: “Let’s get more freezing.”
Me: “You always end up doing that.”
Dr.Louie: “So I see. I put in one tube. Last time we gave you three tubes.”
Me: “Sounds about right”
[…]
Dr.Louie: “You can sit in the chair for a while if you want.”
Me: “I think I”m OK”.
Dr.Louie: “The tooth will be tender for a few days. It needs to recover.”
Me: “That happened with the last one. No problem.”
Dr.Louie: “All that freezing will take a long time to go away. And don’t eat anything for a while.
Me: “I’m painting the rest of the afternoon, so that won’t be a problem.”
Dr.Louie: “Painting? Your house?”
Me: “Lawn sign. I do airbrushing. It’s out in a warehouse north of town”
Dr.Louie: “Airbrushing like on cars and motorcycle tanks?”
Me: “Yup. That’s what I do.”
Dr. Louie: “I’ve always wanted to get my car painted with that. But it’s so expensive.”
Me: “About like dentistry.”
Dr. Louie: “ha ha”
Me:
Dr.Louie: “Let me see you to the front …
Dr.Luoie: “Catherine needs another appointment”
Receptionist: “We have openings next week.”
Me: “Maybe in October”
Dr.Louie: “That sounds good. You take care now.. thankyou.”
Me: “you too.”
Dr.Louie: “Bye now”
Me: “Thanks”
Receptionist: “So, how would you like to pay?”
Me: “Sadist”

OIL: $64 !!!!

See? Anyone can do it.
What not everyone can do, apparently, is adjust prices for inflation.


Click on the graphic to go to the full version at CS Monitor.
The kindest explanation I can come up with for the uninterrupted reporting that $60, $62, $64… is a “NEW RECORD PRICE FOR CRUDE” is that all of the editors over the age of 25 are on vacation.
Actually, come to think of it, that would explain a lot of things.
update – more from Mitch.

A Toronto Sun article highlights one consequence of Canada’s new laws allowing same-sex marriage that should have been obvious.

Bill Dalrymple, 56, and best friend Bryan Pinn, 65, have decided to take the plunge and try out the new same-sex marriage legislation with a twist — they’re straight men.
“I think it’s a hoot,” Pinn said.
The proposal came last Monday on the patio of a Toronto bar amid shock and laughter from their friends. But the two — both of whom were previously married and both of whom are still looking for a good woman to love — insist that after the humour subsided, a real issue lies at the heart of it all.
“There are significant tax implications that we don’t think the government has thought through,” Pinn said.
Dalrymple has been to see a lawyer already and there are no laws in marriage that define sexual preference.

Precisely – there is no sexual orientation means test for marriage. The issue of same sex marriage has never been one of “equal rights”, but of changing a legal definition. Homosexuals have always been allowed to marry members of the opposite sex (and do so successfully enough to raise families) – and conversely, heterosexuals had been prohibited from marrying others of the same sex, for whatever the reason.
Predictably, there’s a “warning” from Toronto lawyer Bruce Walker, a gay rights activist.

“Generally speaking, marriage should be for love,” he said. “People who don’t marry for love will find themselves in trouble.”

Whatever, Bruce.
Having convinced a majority of Canadian MP’s that the “ability to procreate” isn’t a defining characteristic of “marriage”, tell me – -what’s so damned special about “love”?
Update – Blogosphere’s first known use of the term “platonophobe”.

“We need more such consumer advocates out there identifying such opportunities, opportunities that our hate-filled platonophobic society has previously arbitrarily denied to pairs of people who neither love each other nor happen to engage in sexual intercourse.” – Mike, at London Fog

This is going to amaze you.
H/T Bill at INDC.

Something tells me this isn’t an isolated case.

Fox Broadcasting’s “Renovate My Family” promised them a new and improved home designed to accommodate their recently paralyzed son, Steven. Instead of a handicapped-friendly home that made their life easier, they got a shoddy wreck of a house that latest estimates say will cost $350,000 to fix, the Rosiers’ attorney, Mark Belongia, said.
‘Essentially what they did is build a movie set,’ Belongia said.
Wiring remains exposed; door knobs are round, impossible for Steven to grasp; a dryer is vented into the home rather than out of it; smoke detectors don’t work; plywood covers basement windows; siding and plumbing was improperly installed; the furnace has no foundation and is stuffed in a crawl space and sod was installed directly over limestone paving, Belongia said.

Adding injury to injury, someone made off with $13,000 of the homeowner’s tools.
h/t Wizbang.

New Stats Can crime statistics are out.

Among cities, Regina was Canada’s murder capital, with a rate of five per 100,000. Montreal, by contrast, had the country’s lowest rate of 1.7 and Toronto had 1.8.
Nationally, violent crime fell two per cent, with 300,000 incidents reported to police, most of them common assaults. The number of robberies also fell four per cent.
Regionally, the three territories were by far the most violent areas of the country, while Saskatchewan and Manitoba led the way provincially.

Violent crime rates by province/territory (per 100,000 population) Nunavut: 7,884 Northwest Territories: 6,865 Yukon: 3,236 Saskatchewan: 2,006 Manitoba: 1,602 British Columbia: 1,195 Nova Scotia: 1,190 Alberta: 1,087 Canada (average): 946 New Brunswick: 937 Newfoundland and Labrador: 917 Prince Edward Island: 799 Ontario: 755 Quebec: 726

Top 10 murder rates by city (per 100,000 population): Regina: 5.0 Winnipeg: 4.9 Abbotsford, B.C.: 4.4 Edmonton: 3.4 Saskatoon: 3.3 Vancouver: 2.6 Halifax: 2.4 Calgary: 1.9 Toronto: 1.8 Montreal: 1.7

I’m not generally a fan of reality TV (I’ve never seen an episode of Survivor or The Apprentice), but I did catch Brat Camp last night.
It was fascinating stuff, despite the bawling teenage drama queens. One thing I did notice right away – nearly all the parents of these “out of control” (spoiled rotten) teens were well into their late forties or fifties. With Stats Can reporting that the average first time mother is now over thirty years old, one wonders if the combination of affluence, fewer (or no) siblings, and the “maturity” that one gains with age and experience (read: too much exposure to child rearing experts on afternoon tv) may not prove to be a recipe for indulgence.
It’s going to be interesting to watch these brats – and brat is the word for them – deal with the 40 or more days of winter survival camp before them. (They can earn their release after 40 days, but not before. Some students have spent as long as 3 months.) It will be equally interesting to watch the reactions of the bleeding hearts and child psychologistas over the coming weeks.

A couple of years ago I caught a mention that China was full of “empty office buildings” – due to rampant speculation that was racing far ahead of the economy. I have no idea if it was accurate – it’s just that I was reminded of it by this;

A sudden and mysterious drop in China’s oil consumption helped to push down the International Energy Agency’s estimate on Wednesday of global demand for this year.
After growing 11 percent in 2003 and 15.4 percent last year, China’s overall oil use declined 1 percent in the second quarter from the comparable quarter a year earlier, the agency said.
The drop is the latest in a series of unclear and often conflicting indications about whether the Chinese economy is still growing strongly. Top officials of the agency said in interviews they believed that the decline was temporary and that they expected Chinese demand to rebound in the second half of the year, but added that world oil prices could take a heavy blow if Chinese use did not increase.

Curious.

Some days, you’re the chalk.

I drove through areas like this last week on the way to South Dakota – and three weeks before that when we were in Minneapolis. It has been raining, and raining and raining. And it still is. There are thousands of square miles of farmland in Manitoba, the Dakotas and Minnesota under water, and it has nowhere to go.
A few years ago when a late spring snowstorm caused the “Great Manitoba Flood” that threatened Winnipeg and devastated Grand Forks, ND (where several downtown buildings burned after being inundated with flood waters) – I explained to others that to understand why the Red River “Valley” is so prone to flooding, one needs only to do this simple experiment:
a) Place a cookie sheet on a table.
b) pour a quart of water on it.

The reviews are coming in for Mark Helprin’s first new novel in ten years – “Freddy and Fredericka” and they’re very, very good. This one from Joseph Bottum;

There is a peculiar rule of literature that the most brutal satires seem to be written by conservatives, or at least out of a conservative impulse. Think of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” or Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies,” or Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim” or Tom Sharpe’s “The Throwback.” With his lyrical prose and epic imagination in such books as “Winter’s Tale,” “A Soldier of the Great War,” “Memoir From Antproof Case” and last year’s “The Pacific and Other Stories,” Mr. Helprin has proved himself a major fiction writer — and perhaps the only one of his generation it is plausible to call a genuine conservative.
But for all that, “Freddy and Fredericka” is far from brutal. Mr. Helprin’s first full novel in a decade, it is, in the end, a rather sweet book about kings and queens and why human beings might sometimes need them. About America, as well, and why human beings might sometimes need it, too.

Emily Carter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune;

As a wordsmith and a stylist, Helprin is perhaps unmatched in his easeful way with his mother tongue in all its manifestations. He has used his voice well here, but more importantly his ear. From the frilly Victorian embedded clauses of Henry James to the whimsical characterization of Tom Robbins and other “zany” North American writers, Helprin swerves effortlessly through the ages of English literature to create a world at once completely artificial and utterly believable within its well-set parameters.

I think it’s time to kick start my Amazon wish list.

When they say that you’re never too old to learn, it’s true. For example, yesterday I learned why it’s a bad idea to serve red wine at weddings.

A belated happy Dominion Day to everyone.

Why couldn’t I get results like this back when I was in school? Oh, yeah, I was drunk most of the time. Whoops.

Your IQ Is 135

Your Logical Intelligence is Exceptional Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Genius

h/t Andrew

Greetings, I’m R, and I’ll be your host tonight. Kate asked me to keep you entertained while she’s in the custody of liberating democrary-bringers from the South or something.
But I disgress…

Being a proud member of Old Europe, I feel a tad strongly about the quality of beer. One of the greatest advantages of Old Europe is that something worth being called beer actually exists. While not new to the concept of piss in bottles (mostly originating from Belgium, Mexico or Japan), I was totally unprepared for this.
I mean, really. It was… indescribable. I’d rather scour my mouth with a used toilet brush from a heavily frequented public toilet in the South of France than ever having to drink any Canadian beer (did I just call this crap beer? Sorry for the confusion…) again.
So that’s it for today. I’ll think I’ll just grab a bottle of Bier and enjoy the show.
Laterz, dahlins…