Will February be as soft as January? I make these observations thinking one day I will maybe go back and check how bad each winter has been year after year. But I don't. These things just languish. Like so many dreams. Contemplating leaving other things aside first, however. The cable TV and direct line telephone are under the budget department's eye. When we had the power outage the other day the land line failed us due to the electrified base the wireless phone depends upon. Why not just have another iPhone for about the same price? At least cable TV brings me 7 months of baseball.

♦ Quite right. Use of a martini glass does not make for a martini. Your government store in action.
♦ "As usual, the Flea is right: "I don't expect I will be back to H+M any time soon. If you work in a "creative industry", or hold any sort of intellectual property in any medium, I suggest you don't either."
♦ Neato. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) shaking hands during his lifetime with both John Quincy Adams, born 1767, and John F Kennedy who died 1963.
♦ As we have fun watching the GOP Super PACs lead to the GOP eating itself, consider, too, the guilt of the Tea Partiers whose great-granddad didn't fill out the right paper work.
♦ Now I know why my Mother was enthroned as the Brisbane Queen in 1949.

So, there you go. I have to make this something more than an eight day commitment. But there is beer blogging to do, you know. Lots of beer blogging.

What a funny season. Thaws, rains, freezes, winds, blackouts and snow with thunder. Reminds me more of the east cost than the center of the continent. OK, the eastern edge of the center. The debates go on for the GOP. Seems like every candidate is a bit sketchy but each distinctly so. Newt said that the media made it harder to attract good people to public office. Is the contest proving the point? Romney is still the most interesting character as his life has been so complex and alt. Mormonism, corporate savior and undertaker, the last man to buy Brylcreem.

♦ Loners and geeks outraged at outrageous slur against their lifestyle.
♦ I am pretty sure I met this man at college but had no idea that he had a life so well spent.
♦ I love the Soviet style use of anti-hero in this article.
♦ It boggles my mind that Ontario pays HST / GST to Ottawa and Alberta does not. Looks like 1 billion or so too much into the Federation. Can we get a rebate?
♦ Andrew Coyne really is a simplistic thick numbskull sometimes. Rather than discriminating all that is needed is an oath of office that manages the loyalty aspect. No need to create a huge class of second class citizens. But thanks for suggesting it.
♦ Framing one's politics as conservative and being in favour of marriage is in direct opposition to swinger life style. Choose one or the other and stand by your decisions. But don't pretend it's not a core question of integrity.

There. Was this a big week? Who knows? Maybe next week will be really big. Or is that something we'd like, err, just to avoid.

The power went out. From 3 pm to midnight yesterday. Sat around in one room for the evening and marveled at the power of the battery. I tweeted and listened to radio. Ice was to blame. Ice from the sky. Fortunately, it appears to have rained all night washing away the coating. A few trees in the neighbourhood fell. Now, there is good reason to have those ribs in the freezer

♦ I like beer as much as the next guy. Probably more. But I am not sure why one of Ontario's less interesting brewers deserved $1,000,000 in tax support annually.
♦ Really? I assume the PM does not know every implication of every Federal legal brief. And besides. If the brief was correct in relation to same sex marriage, it also means that the same is true for different sex marriage - if you don't meet a foreign level of consanguinity in your home country, a Canadian marriage would not be valid. No one believes that.
♦ Let's be clear, then. I am the guy who backed Harper this week, not the National Post. No Senate reform, please. No need to entirely lock up Federal governance, Steve.
♦ Scots apparently are not free to make up their minds. Time to revive the Declaration of Arbroath. "It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." Makes you weepy just thinking about it.

There. Done. Gotta work one more day before the gorging of rib fest begins. Thanks, blackout, for reminding me to make time for ribs.

Is there nothing as fraught as a Canadian of any political stripe claiming that we are being manipulated by the United States?

The ammunition for Ottawa’s broadside against the pipeline’s opponents is drawn in part from the work of a relatively little-known blogger from North Vancouver. In the last 15 months, independent blogger and single mother Vivian Krause has become a one-person clearinghouse on how U.S. money is helping finance Canadian environmental activism. Ms. Krause has used her “Fair Questions” blog to document the money trail behind what she calls the “U.S.-funded campaign against Canadian oil” – research that’s been used by defenders of the oil sands, including the lobby group Ethical Oil, to blunt criticism of the tarry resource.

While "ethical oil" is one of the silliest ideas going it's obviously not as bad as the blood diamonds or blood chocolate of some other energy sources. Yet it sure isn't so pure as to deserve the label ethical. Let's just call it "relatively a lot better" oil. That being the case, there is a valid political debate over whether methods of extraction or delivery or price or any number of other things are as good as they might be.

There is a parallel debate going on near here in central New York about another method of extraction, hydro fracking. And there is debate. That is a good thing. But that might be only be a good thing in America. Because, according to the story, folks would "like to see the Gateway pipeline succeed, but after decisions made by Canadians alone." That's asbestos logic. There's money in outsourcing so don't ask those who have to take on the associated issues. Especially Americans. Because we are generally so dislocated from them, separated. Aren't we. Makes sense.

Why do we moan about another birthday but not New Years? Consider the alternative. It's me and the cat this week and I have been inordinately busy. The electrician has been in. The stash now has a light switch thanks to the electricians coming in on Wednesday. One wall has one coat of light sandy old paper sort of colour instead.of a grey plummy tone that looked like great auntie's lipstick. I changed the furnace filter. I bought a toilet flap. I need to watch it. Handy is not a word associated with me.

♦ Paying a consultant to edit wikipedia to remove bad things people say is a bad business strategy.
♦ These new stats lead me to ask... what if Mr. Harper is not the economic wizz he admits he is?
♦ "...she's upright..."
♦ What did you learn from Iowa? Can you even name the states that border Iowa?
♦ My in-laws are looking much better all of a sudden.

There. Caught up with the week. Tonight I strike a greater blow against plummy lipsticked walls. Viva! Viva!!!

So what do you call the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve? I don't think of them as the holidays. They are the weeks before the 24th when you spend and spend and spend and spend and spend as if you were in some sort of Bacchanalian cult... oh, well there is that. These days are the days of foreboding. Not of the New Year. But of the New Year's Eve party. The dark night. Evening of the lost... of the damned. Speaking of the lost and the damned, how unholy a thing it would be to be a journalist this week. Nothing happens, like this:

♦ Who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaares! Yet it's is the Glob's #1 sports story Thursday evening under the heading "The Game Changer."
♦ Tribe? Remember when the tribes of reel-to-reel rumbled against thos of the 8 track? That's what this will be like in 25 years.
♦ zzzzzzz...
♦ Even God is getting bored with this person in the news. Sweet touch with the allegation that Ron Paul is corrupt. God's response: "...of all the things I made Ron Paul to be, you think I needed to throw in corrupt?"
♦ And then there are the Jays. At least the Sox are making trades that I might understand one day.

OK. That'll do. That's what you can say about 2011. That'll do for now.

Odd but interesting column by Wente this week in The Glob, the Old and Stale, the Blobby Male... I'll be here all week, try the liver:

To tell the truth, I don’t agree with all of Mr. Harper’s policies myself. (e.g., the niqab.) But it seems obvious to me that his government is far more in touch with mainstream Canadians than all those critics who accuse him of abandoning the mainstream. He’s worse than an extremist – he’s a populist. Or else he has duped and terrorized the masses so effectively that they are powerless to resist. Kind of like you-know-who.

Sure he is liked. He is also increasingly irrelevant. The retraction of the Feds from the exercise of their own powers combined with confirmation that they cannot dabble in provincial powers has left Mr. Harper as the king of very little. Sure, he has added back the "Royal" to the separate wings of the armed forces but, as a recent chat with a committed military officer reminded me, pretty much only as a matter of branding even if welcome. Nothing has changed in the continued sensible and increased integration of our military as a single fighting force. And, sure, he likes to pay attention to the Arctic more than places where a lot of people live but as that is the only mandated geographic area of Federal administration one would assume he might. And, sure, he like to talk about a balanced budget and spending prudently but one day he might try to pull it off as his Liberal predecessors did.

Mr. Harper believes in a weak limited national government, which is his right, but that means he himself is made weaker, less relevant to the national discourse. For now, we are paying more attention to ourselves as Canadians expressed through our provincial and municipal policies and operations. And why not? We have many layers of meaning, we Canadians. When Harper is replaced the focus will change. What an utterly boring legacy he has mapped out for himself.

Bullet number one: Ping Pong...

Bullet number two: flea bites at whale. Misses.

Bullet number three: House GOP caves.

Bullet number four: North Rustico...

Bullet number five: Grand Champion!!

I love when a dictator dies. Sadly, as with today's death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, sometimes it isn't when surrounded by your subjects who are filling your body with bullets. But, nonetheless, ding dong the witch is dead. The British keep an oddly stiff upper lip:

Speaking today the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said: “The people of N Korea are in official mourning after the death of Kim Jong Il. We understand this is a difficult time for them. “This could be a turning point for North Korea. We hope that their new leadership will recognise that engagement with the international community offers the best prospect of improving the lives of ordinary North Korean people."

Difficult time? Difficult time??? The man who is nuts is dead. He fed his people juche and grass and ignorance and gulags. We only have hints of how bad it is. Now he is in Hell. Good.

At least there is hope. It's not like Canada's secret mission in 2006 was going to be a real breakthrough. Maybe these people can now get a chance to enjoy their lives.