Events have led to two weeks off without much planned. I have stuff to do but we are not going to the Fat Boy by the sea or Indiana for that matter. Home repair and snacking is what I am planning. Napping and snacking is what I will end up doing. I just hope the global economy does not collapse while I am off. Thanks, Tea Partiers for understanding things so well. I get the point. Not so much your process. Well, sure there will be that fun first few months when the US dollar is worth 27 cents and we all go on a shopping spree but after that...

• • Best description ever: "...Mr. Levant is a great speed talker and he can easily run over anyone who can’t keep up..." While I do trust his heart is largely in the right place, he's not exactly where you go for considered thought. Must have played the big drum in the high school band.
• • Remember five years ago when people would bleat that this sort of thing means the end of the new economy as we know it? Remember the new economy?
• • I had no idea there was an all sausage restaurant out there. Now, it's closing. I weep.
• • Greatest copyright principle ever. Whatever happens, I'm on the side of Jack Kirby.
• • "Dear GOP. You caused this more than I did. Here's the graph. Suck it."

Well, I can't say I am rushing but I really should. I already need a nap. I need comfy clothes, I need a cocktail. Forget the jetpack, I need a cocktail. Bet they'll be cheap over the other side in a few days.

Twenty years ago today I was in a pal's apartment in Ottawa, late afternoon, stinking hot day, watching the Expos as El Presidente got his perfect game. I was alone. I was watching a 10-12 inch black and white TV. I was listening to records, half paying attention. Then, when I realized what was going on, I knew I could not stop playing the record that was playing at that moment. I needed to get on the karma train. It was Harry Belafonte, an original recording of "Day-Oh!" I scraped the needle back over the lp's grooves about 27 times through the last half of the game. VVvvttt..."DAY-Yoh!! Da-ay-y-yay-yo..." over and over.

Alone. In an apartment in Ottawa. We won.

That is what this heat wave-ette has been treated like here in Easlakia. It got to 44C with the humidex yesterday. Yet here at 7:00 am it's 21C with the windows open, the air in the house now smelling of something real. Reality. Is that actually a proper subject for late July? I mean it's Friday, it's going to be stinkin' hot again by the end of the day and really all I should be thinking about is that beer on the deck at 4:32 pm. Or is that a higher order of reality?

• • Update: Bob Rae is Super Elite! But, then again, I know someone who once crossed a Warsaw Pact checkpoint by flashing a Sears card.
• • Speaking of matters of a higher order, is the American right really that unChristian? Well, I suppose if you are going to go and quote Christ and all...
• • And still speaking of matters of a higher order, the Fallon Timberlake History of Rap, Pt 2 was as good as the new peach crop.
• • I had no idea our Prime Minister was a thesbian. Interesting that it is not really newsworthy and something of a private matter.
• • So, if the Tories have run government for over five years, why are they only getting to the war criminals in our midst now?
• • Want a government that works, Grecians? Pay your taxes for starters.

Day has now dawned. Before dawn there were cartoons with the now snoring 2 year old. Two hours have passed. Had I slept them, I would not now feel like a shoe box.

This year's vintage base ball game was remarkable. The weather was so hot I thought that I was going to faint when I slowed into second on a couple of doubles. The team had a few new faces but was as keen as ever and took both games after never winning a single game in the USA in the four previous seasons. Well, there was 2008 when the game was rained out. We declared that we had not lost by default.

It's Sacket's Harbor weekend and we are past the point of no return. I think I the team will actually have enough players and, except for playing from 10 am to 2 pm in the 90F heat with 100% humidity, it should be great. I will park on the bench. Shouting things. Waving my hands at outfielders who ignore me. I may chew on a cigar but all of mine are Cubans. Filthy habit anyway. Bought some before the RMC game and couldn't give them away. Shared on a few nights later and felt like crap the whole next day. What the hell has happened to me?

• • Why does some kid blowing of his job warrant 1,295 comments? 24 year old quits job hardly deserves that kinda attention. But maybe there was an earlier post I missed - 23 year old slacks off at work.
• • A greed. fancy schmansy tiny portions are pure evil. "Would you like some more?" is not.
• • Best description of Harper I have ever seen - he's a centrist like 80% of Canadians. The power of the centrists is so strong is makes conservatives and socialists think they are in charge. Mental mind control of their brains... that's what's going on.
• • PEI is spending $500 per person to bring tourists there. Think of the underlying economic policy thought that requires. Even HB weeps now.
• • I love the beer nerd as record store clerk circa 1982 imagery. The slight rush when the guy taking your paper money nods in approval at your purchase. "Their best album... definitely under rated..."

There. Another week gone. Summer. Steak tonight. Bad banjo playing by the pool as I sip Belgian beer. That's what I'm talking about.

Dialect? Have you ever been in a killer cab in St. John's, the taxis allegedly only driven by Baymen? Well, it's not just a Newfie joke as the Feds propose moving the sea search and rescue co-ordination centres:

“We can see a loss of life if you don’t have someone with a thorough knowledge of the area and the language that’s being used,” Judy Foote, the MP for Random–Burin–St. George’s in Newfoundland, told a news conference on Tuesday. Ms. Foote said when she speaks to fishermen in her own riding, “and they tell me of incidents that they’ve had at sea, if I didn't know them as well as I do, and speak to them on a constant basis, I wouldn’t understand them. So I understand perfectly that someone from Nova Scotia or someone from Ontario might not understand them.”

Growing up in Nova Scotia with Scots parents, I have always had a hard time following a thick Newfoundland accent. I entirely understand the concern in theory. But apparently "dispatchers in Halifax have had to call the dispatchers in St. John’s and play them tapes of rescue calls from Newfoundland because they did not understand the people on the other end of the line." That's not theory. And as part of a Federal cost cutting plan "expected to save about $1-million"? That is kind of weird.

I am all for government restraint but is this the first million you save? Aren't there more auditors to fire somewhere?

Me and the cat. Happens every year as the family packs up to go a visiting as I stay home and work. First task on my bachelor week was apparently to put a paring knife in my thumb so I shelved all other tasks I had half-assigned myself for the week. The cat didn't. The cat complains. It stands ten feet from me and yowls a list of complaints and demands at me. It did it again just now. Food, water? Check, place to pee, place to sleep? Check. What exactly are you on about? You want a wrist watch or something?

• • It is always funny watching tech nerds debate the law. Answer? No one. If a dog has a ball in its mouth it does not legally possess it either.
• • A very quiet way to end combat operations. You would think there should be some sort of civic event marking the day.
• • "...there were six people and two cats at their own ceremony, one dressed up in a bow tie and the other in a lace collar." Freakish. I knew there was something freakish going on.
• • "...Coulson, Cameron's former communications chief, arrived at a police station to face questioning about alleged phone hacking..." Surely crimes were committed, even under English law.
• • Why shouldn't the Grits arise again? The Tories did. I don't care that much for binary politics for no other reason that it places ideology over policy let alone administration. As the US debt debate illustrates, dislocated desire for ideological "change" is about as stupid as stupid gets. Third, fourth and fifth parties by necessity mean that there is no toggle switch.

Too quiet around here to be running. Except for that damn cat.

If I had a chance I would wallow in US constitutional law for no other goal than to enjoy how the flow if words can be used and misused and wondered upon. Consider the fourth section of the 14th Amendment brought in after the US Civil War. It has an interesting application - of some sort - today:

...It is inconsistent with the political context that produced Section 4, because it would not give the Republicans the sort of assurances they needed. We should interpret section 4 so that it solved the political problems that the Republicans wanted to solve. If our proposed interpretation does not solve those problems, it is very likely that we have picked the wrong reading. I begin with the assumption that the central purpose of section 4 was to prevent the Democrats, once they regained political power, from repudiating the Union debt-- including pensions and bounties. To use my colleague Jed Rubenfeld's language, this was the "paradigm case" of what Section 4 prohibited. But what if the Democrats did not officially repudiate the Union debt but but merely chose (or threatened) not to repay it?

Flip the Democrats and Republicans and more it 145 years into the future and we are looking at today's news: "The Obama administration and congressional leaders are working to complete a deal on a long-term budget reduction package..." So, if the talks fail and a default on the debt occurs, is that the "questioning" that the section refers to? "Questioning?" What a horrible word to place in a constitution. Questioning occurs before there are facts known. I question my kid when I find his room overly messy. I question claims made my individually wrapped snacks as to their healthiness. What the heck does "shall not be questioned" when placed in a constitution?