What Ho! This is my 3003rd post to Gen X 40 over 3 years and 6 weeks or so and I have never begun with a "What Ho!" to you. So "What Ho, all you all!"
Now is the day, the day of fitba. Europe, in addition to being just generally evil and liberal (which I know because blogs say so), is inconveniently placed. All the games are during the eastern time zone work day. First starts at 8:30 am and last begins at 3:00 pm. I am undone.
- Update: What is not to understand?
Neil and Carol Faulkner said they got so used to seeing Daniel Côté working on Senator Lavigne's property, they assumed he must be a relative. "He was moving stones. He was clearing wood. He cleared a lot of the trees on the other side of the fence," Carol said. But Côté wasn't a relative. He was a Senate employee on the public payroll.
I think I recall the cottage work public employee as being a John Buchanan Tory cabinet era trick. - Update: this has always fascinated me as I am both an economic nomad (but not a head of cattle as New Brunswick MP Jean-Claude d'Amours suggests in the story) and an above average supplier of equalization give place and opportunity:
A Conservative call to help workers from the Maritimes move west has provoked the ire of Liberal MPs, who say Ottawa should instead be creating jobs where they live. Tory MP Brian Jean set off the row Thursday when he said the government should develop a strategy to relocate unemployed Atlantic Canadians to Alberta, either temporarily or permanently.
Comment? Why not offer to increase the ability to take an opportunity to move (which in fact you do get now through tax deductions). - I am really fed up with political blogging other than my own - and most talk radio, too - except for the stuff I like. There will come a day soon when people will be made fun of for saying things like use of eminent domaine to support big business is a liberal plot, that liberals are assisting the war on terror, that liberal is in itself code for "what I do not like" as terrorist became code for "those I do not like". Drugged up anti-drug yappers the lot. It is general fear mongering and plot huggers and should just be rated according to the whacko scale without consideration as to any residue of substance that might be. I agree with the Chattanoogan - Ann Coulter has now giving us all the Senator Joseph McCarthy moment of no shame. When did shameless fear mongerers and plot huggers seeking their own ego's pleasure and their own wallet's revenue at the expense of public discourse have an easier go of it? These are the times of the ninny and the shark has been jumped. Dixie Chick country chart record sales prove it. Govern yourselves accordingly: type "liebrano", be treated like you have a lobotomy. And the same goes for liberal blogs and radio but who the hell would listen to those guys?
- John Gushue has asked about the 3:30 songs on your computer. I seem to specialize in the 3:29 range tune as I just have The Bitterest Pill by The Jam and "Black Is The Colour" by Paul Weller. Go figure. "Girl" by Beck, the song of now one year ago, misses by one second.
- Now that I understand "Girl" was a year ago and see that Kid A was six, I think I need to know about some new music. Let me know. Pop stuff now - I get all the banjo stuff I can handle. Looking at the Billboard Top 200 for the first time in maybe ten years is a flashback to the UK charts of a certain point of my pre-punk tender years - lots of off-pop stuff, retreads, reissues and greatest hits and nothing cool. Is it 1975? Good Lord. #62 is Michael Bolton's Bolton Swings Sinatra: The Second Time Around. Why is Huey Lewis & The News, Greatest Hits charting? Sadly, nothing seems to touch this or this...though why the white gloves I can't remember.
- Lemonheads tabs.
- A clearly a talk radio listener. Has Drudge bookmarked. Conversely, Brian Mann of NCPR (usually covering the Adirondack beat) has done an amazing job reporting from Toronto, doing actual journalism in the streets this week after the arrests of the wingnuts with dreams of fertilizer. Listen to his series of radio pieces here.
- Did I mention you are to chat about the World Cup games today? Are any of you watching them? I am taking Germany and Poland as winning today, 4-1 and 2-1 over Costa Rica and Ecuador respectively.
While I am surprisingly pleased by the efficinecy of our new rural overlords in certain matters of administration, do we really need the two most powerful politicians in the land holding secret meetings? Why not treat each other and us with more respect? That being said, the clickable photo does point out mighty Dalton's issues with photogenetics.- Yanks crumble.
Comments
cm - June 9, 2006 8:21 am
What ho, indeed. I really need a flag for my car. But which one?
gr - June 9, 2006 8:34 am
Re: music. I tip my hat to Flea, as he has his finger on the pulse of modern music and his taste ranges widely and interestingly, but I don't want to sound like an ad for his blog. Anyway: music. There has been talk here of the White Stripes in recent months, and I have seen what others say about them. Almost 30 years ago there was a strange new band with a whiney voiced singer who changed the world, the Talking Heads. The Stripes may not be the Heads, but what is it about those strange beats, that annoying, whiney voice? Why is it so oddly compelling?
Alan - June 9, 2006 8:37 am
I have the White Stripes last two albums. I ordered the Arctic Monkeys from amazon yesterday. Why can't Franz Ferdinand put out a new CD every month?
cm - June 9, 2006 9:33 am
Have you heard Jack White's side project, the Raconteurs? Personally, I'm all excited because <a href=http://thetossers.com/>the Tossers</a> are coming to the Horseshoe next week.
Flea - June 9, 2006 10:34 am
"Premier Dalton McGuinty and Prime Minister Stephen Harper met secretly on Parliament Hill over the weekend, the <i>Toronto Star</i> has learned."
I am not clear on what makes this meeting, discussed in Canada's highest circulation daily, a secret one.
Alan - June 9, 2006 11:16 am
I suppose it is the difference between "will meet" and the verb of choice "met".
gr - June 9, 2006 11:24 am
I hear Jack White has started acting and movie stuff and other things. Not bad for a guy who was an upholsterer until he hit the big time. And look what he has done for old fashioned adidas sneakers.
Flea - June 9, 2006 1:18 pm
Yes, I got the "met" part but considering it is less than a week later and her you BLOG* about it so it cannot have been terribly secret. More important, I am not certain how McGuinty travelling all the way from Toronto to Ottawa to chat with the Prime Minister for an hour constitutes a secret in the first place. Were they meant to have the press core waiting in the corridor?
*Noting your citizen-journalism.
Alan - June 9, 2006 1:28 pm
Thank you for that asterisk. I am, however, filing these matters now under "citizen-paranoid."
Alan - June 9, 2006 1:31 pm
WTF?!?!<blockquote class="smalltext">1659 BST: The two national anthems and formalities are out of the way but before the kick-off there is a minute's silence for the members of Fifa who have died in the four years since the last World Cup.</blockquote>I take it this is not about the nation members but the individual sports bloatocrats. I think instead we should have a moment of silence for what has been done to the game and the bank account in the name of sport.
Mike - June 9, 2006 4:00 pm
Look it up! It's the Rules of Football. One minute silence for something at the beginning of each game. No exceptions.
Alan - June 9, 2006 4:06 pm
Maybe a moment's silence for those who are unaware or disrespectful of moments of silence.
ry - June 9, 2006 6:48 pm
Only the word 'liberal' and the attendant conspiracies, Al? Surely you do see the same treatment having been done with the word 'neocon', and many of the monikers attached to conservative views, no?
Check out this from Mark Safransky(a good Chicago boy):
http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2006/06/networks-are-surprisingly-resilient.html
It's triablism, Al. My tribe good. Your tribe evil. Not just from one side. From all sides(your attack on Jonah Goldberg this morning?). As noted by this: 'Meanwhile, on the J-Church the other evening, C.N. overheard a heated argument that reached its angry climax with the hurled charge: "You know what? I think you are a Republican.'' The ear-witness said "other passengers gasped.''' http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/02/DDGS0INI851.DTL&hw=garchik&sn=002&sc=908 Or Randi Rhodes on AAR.
See that's kinda why I like hanging here or at JoA's. Center-left. Center-right. And you can say, 'Hey now, take that back. That's dirty pool,' at both places and lay out your case.
So 'Hey now, expand that. Leaving it as only one side is dirty pool.'
ry - June 9, 2006 6:52 pm
Ooops. Skimming bad. (no dinner for gollum tonight).
Appologies, Al. Didn't notice this on the first pass: 'And the same goes for liberal blogs and radio but who the hell would listen to those guys?'
My bad.
Alan - June 9, 2006 7:10 pm
Not at all - what I did was glib even if correct. I crank a lot about conservative bloggers but I will be damned if I will be preached to by my own lefties, Gordo excepted. We are a big raft of the center even if I make the weight on the left side a bit more, the wash risking the gunnels.
Jay Currie - June 9, 2006 7:50 pm
One of the advantages the conservative side of the aisle has is that we can repudiate our own wingnuts without being chastised for a lack of solidarity.
The other advantage is a natural tension between socons and libertarians which allows for an internal debate: the lefty side suffers from the fact that there are only so many ways of singing Kumbaya.
Flea - June 9, 2006 7:55 pm
You must be remembering the scuffles over same-sex marriage differently than I do. I was under the impression we had been excommunicated from the Tory big church.
Flea - June 9, 2006 7:55 pm
That last one was directed at Jay, btw.
Alan - June 9, 2006 8:22 pm
I saw ya, I saw ya. <p>That is one of the blindness of the right. We see their splintering schismists but they assume we have none. My favorite splinter of the left was when the United Church decided in the 80s to no longer ask Ministers as to their sexual orientation. One faction in the local presbytery rejected the idea and split under the guidance of a local great leading pastor who within a year ran off with the police sargeant's wife. Ye without sin cast the first stone.
David Janes - June 9, 2006 9:22 pm
To Jay's comment: heh.
To Flea's: ? I don't remember anyone being expelled from the Tory church for an opinion either way on Gay marriage. Or the Liberal or NDP churches either to be fair, although you had to sit in the back pews if you opposed.
Alan - June 9, 2006 9:26 pm
I don't recall conservative churches giving anyone the boot for anything, David, even if there are worse places to sit than the back pews. But I'm listening to the Lemonheads so I don't care.
ry - June 9, 2006 10:10 pm
There once was a time when I thought Evan Dando and the Lemonheads were good(Tonya Donnely may have had a big part in it, not sure anymore. Hmmmm. Tonya Donnely.). BUt then they did a remake of Mrs. Robinson and a song called 'Drug Buddy'. That about killed it for me. Haven't boughten anything of theirs since the "It's a Shame About Ray" album.
I think, and it may be very presumptive of me, but Herr Flea(Provider of the Cool Music and Hot Womenz pictures) seems to be talking about the Canadian equivalent of RINO-ism. Calling into question someone bonifides as X because they just aren't as hardcore as you, essentially. Look at what the US democrats have done to poor Joe Liberman and how John McCain was treated in '00.
"We are a big raft of the center even if I make the weight on the left side a bit more, the wash risking the gunnels." Then this raft definitely is bowed heavily upward in the middle(with me adding more weight than is healthy on the right side). So somehow this sucker gets on down the river of life.
Alan - June 9, 2006 10:13 pm
Bingo.
Jay Currie - June 10, 2006 5:35 am
flea, not so much excommunicated as left behind.
The fun part will be watching Harper praying that his motion to reopen the SSM file is defeated in Parliament in the fall. My theory is that Harper is actually one of us but has to pretend to be one of them...which must be wearing.
Flea - June 10, 2006 9:08 am
David: You obviously were not reading the mail in my in-box.
Jay: I agree with you 100% re. PMSH's opinion on the issue. Much like the President's recent "support" of the marriage amendment. I am curious how he is going to engineer enough of his caucus away from the House on the day to make certain the motion fails. If it does not, he can kiss his hypothetical majority good-bye.