So here it is. Eight months to May. Around five to the Super Bowl and the beginning of spring training. Why the horror? I'm too fair skinned to tan. Oh, yes. That bleak lump on your sofa has to go to school next week

• Update: Rob has posted an entertaining memoir of his move to Canada 35 years ago.
• Update: Perhaps this is appropriate for someone whose respect for merit based appointments was so limited.
• Recommended reading this weekend as your kids sulk includes this web site of myths about over regulation in the EU. It seems to be an effort by the sign of the end times super-government to debunk. A ban on calling cod "cod" seems to be a sensible idea. I don't know what the fuss is about.
• Very sad news this week with the passing of the other Michael Jackson, the man who made writing and thinking about good beer acceptable - and even making it more interestingly, I suppose. If you like something other than pale macro crap, you probably owe him a debt of gratitude.
• I don't know about you but I don't really want an election over the Afghanistan mission. On all the evidence, there is a reasonable argument that of all the things being done in what used to be called the war on terror, helping stability and modernity come to the corners of the mountain passages there is attacking the problem at one of its its root sources. Yet we read this:

  The Liberals will force an early vote on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan this fall in a bid to set Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the defensive over the issue. Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said his party will use its first opposition day in the fall session to put forward a motion for Canada to notify its allies that it will withdraw from Kandahar in February, 2009. Although Mr. Harper has said Parliament will vote on whether to extend Canada's military mission past that date, he has not said when. The Liberals hope to force the Conservatives to take a stand as soon as next month. "The Prime Minister is wasting time, shilly-shallying, and I know why – because he wants to stay longer than February, 2009," Mr. Dion told reporters after a meeting of his caucus in St. John's to plot the party's fall strategy.

  Remind me. Did we set a date to have the Balkans resolve itself? What is the magic of two Februaries (sp?) from now? And when was the last time anyone actually used the term "shilly-shallying"?
• What would the end of baseball season be without a Red Sox collapse and a weird conspiracy theory:

  In the bottom of Wednesday's first inning, with Derek Jeter perched on second and play still in progress, an unidentified Resident Security Agent from major league baseball pulled Francona out of the dugout and into the tunnel, making him lift his wind jacket to prove that he was wearing his uniform top No.47 under his shell, as per MLB rules. The game rolled on. "When Derek Jeter's on second base and I've got somebody coming from the league making me go down in the runway, I was a little perturbed," Francona said. "We're trying to keep him close. Unless that (bleeping) RSA can keep him close, we need him out of the dugout. That's about as embarrassed as I've been for baseball."..."I thought he was arresting me," Francona said. "He came in the dugout and I said, 'Can this wait a second?' He said, 'No.'"

  See! See!!!!