The Million Word Year

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Archive for category Commentary

News : Boston Dawna has retired

Sep 8

Posted by MegaWordMan in Odd | No Comments

In the laid back, eccentric neighborhood of Venice Beach, California, ut takes a fair bit to stand out from the crowd, but the woman known in the daytime to her hairdressing clients as Donna Chaet and by night time to the seedy underbelly of Venice Beach as Boston Dawna, a feared and extremely persistent crime fighter and force for public law and order.

She moved there in 1971 from her native Boston, and would see all kinds of illegal things happening right out in the open. It was not long before she was banging on doors telling people to call the police, and what do you know, the police would show up and catch the crooks.

These days, she has a cell phone and some sex shop handcuffs, and until recently, patrolled the streets of Venice with a fearless attitude, an indomitable spirit, and a commanding tone and presence that even big burly men seem to respect and obey.

The cops say they will miss her and her keen eye for crime. They credit her with helping them bust up a major bicycle trafficking ring, amongst many other achievements.

Myself, I am guessing that she is probably a bit much to take and other, non law enforcement residents of Venice, California probably consider her to be at least as much of a pain in the ass as a help, but I admire her for her proactive (read : bossy) spirit and her dedication to making sure Venice is a nice place to live, with less of the stealing and the fighting and the public urination.

I mean, I am all for a laid back attitude towards life. From what I have seen, Venice seems like a really cool, relaxed, eccentric, weird kind of place to live. But there are limits to laid back, and generally, those start with basic god damned bladder control.

So while I am sure there are many citizens of Venice who will actually be heaving a sigh of relief at the news she is retiring from her self-appointed role, I say : good job, Boston Dawna, and remember that while you may move on, your Dawnettes (other ladies taking on her job) will keep those miscreants in line in your name long after you have passed away and gone to harass lowlifes in Heaven.

There are a lot of different ways to be a nut in Venice, and she chose a way that was actually helpful. Good for her!

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Review : Cat Shit One, Episode One

Sep 6

Posted by MegaWordMan in Film, Reviews | 1 Comment

Yes, that is seriously the name of the thing I am about to review. I have no idea why it is named that.

You see, I am not an anime fan, or a manga fan, at all. I have seen a smattering of anime films and series, just big famous stuff like Ranma 1/2, Princess Mononoke, and Neon Genesis Evangelion, but for the most part, that was just what the people I was around at the time were watching. I have never gotten into the whole thing myself.

So when I encountered a link to some anime series with the incredibly weird title Cat Shit One, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I knew the title, and that it featured anthropomorphic animals, and that was it. For all I knew, it could have be Japanese furry scat porn. I had no clue.

But with a name that weird, I just had to check it out. I am crazy like that.

Turns out, it is nothing to do with feces at all. It is military/action fiction which happens to feature cute fuzzy animals blowing up, shooting, and otherwise killing one another. It is pretty damn cool.

Plot wise, this episode is extremely corny and predictable. If you are familiar with the basic tropes of American style military action storytelling, you know more or less everything that is going to happen.

<<<---SPOILERS START HERE--->>>

You know that our two heroic action buddies, hardcore killing machine Packy and nervous, identifiable coward (Game over man, game OVER!) Botasky, in this universe both anthropomorphic rabbits, are going to be sent to rescue helpless and defenseless hostages, who will be beaten and maltreated before our eyes just so we are absolutely sure the bad guys are really, really bad, and that to do so they will have to gun down dozens of interchangeable bad guys (in this case, all anthropomorphic camels who speak Arabic and are in the desert and it is all, frankly, kind of racist but this is an action movie, comes with the territory), and that amazing heroics will be demanded of them, and that at some point our leader hero will order the coward hero NOT to come save him, and that our coward hero will defy that order and come save him, and we’ll have the cute scene where the leader hero says “For disobeying orders…. I am going to buy you a beer. ” Ha ha ha! Group laugh.

Nothing you have not seen before a zillion times, and the addition of cute fuzzy animals with machine guns and combat armor does not really change much. If that was all there was to this series, there would be very little to recommend it.

But the visuals…. my lord, the visuals.

I absolutely love this latest quantum leap in computer animation. The sorts of things that even small companies are putting out right now absolutely blow my mind with how real they look. I enjoyed this episode as good old fashioned uncomplicated American style military action storytelling, as perfected back in the 80′s, but mostly, I enjoyed it as a visual treat, feast for the eyes, whatever cliche you want to call it.

It was just damned cool to look at.

There is still, of course, a visualization hierarchy in all animation. The more static and geometric something is, the more “real” it will look. The more dynamic and especially the more human something is, the less ‘real’ it will look. But that hierarchy has been flattened considerably, and because the source material involve animal characters, they have the advantage in this piece of animal facial expressions and body language being simpler and more easily stylized than the human equivalent.

We have very intense specialized hardware to read one another’s mood from facial expression, body language, and so on, and that makes animated people, especially their faces, extremely difficult. Less so with cartoon animals, which is part of their appeal. Their expressions are simple, easily read, and being animals gives us a little distance from what is going on.

This, incidentally, is also why animals are used so much in children’s entertainment.

But back to Cat Shit One. I loved watching it. The plot held no surprises, but sometimes, knowing exactly what is going to happen does not entirely diminish the enjoyment of the tried and true emotionally satisfying tropes. As a media consumer, the savvy and mature of us eventually stop expecting everything to be as good as the stuff we really love and learn to appreciate things for whatever they are.

And episode one of Cat Shit One is a simple, by the numbers slice of American style military action storytelling, with plenty of explosions, heroism, male virtue, bullets flying everywhere, black and white morality, the fight of good against evil, casual and non-serious racism, and lots of seriously cool military hardware and jargon, including the cavalry showing up in the form of one of my perennial favorite bits of military coolness, the American combat helicopter.

Perhaps further episodes develop a more complex and intricate and less predictable plot. They would not be the first show to start off with a by the numbers crowd pleaser as a first episode to just give people a low demand taste of what to expect and introduce the characters and setting before they start making things complicated and high concept.

I don’t know, I’ve only watching this, the first episode. But I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. Just seeing what computer animation can do these days is fun enough. Enjoy it while you can, modern animators, this is the honeymoon period where just making the visuals look so damned good is enough to make the thing you make worth watching.

Pretty soon, that will become old hat and we will start expecting, you know, story, plot, and all that stuff too. Fair warning.

IF you would like to watch what I watched, click this here link. I am not entirely sure how official or legal that site is, but it’s where I watched it, and I would highly, highly recommend watching it full screen if your computer will let you, because there is so much visual detail you will want to get it all.

Does anyone out there know why the hell their unit is called Cat Shit One?

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News : Fox News North?

Sep 5

Posted by MegaWordMan in Canada | No Comments

Have you heard? Evil plans are afoot to create a Canadian version of Fox News called Fox News North. And I would like you, my dear reader(s), to go sign this petition against it.

When I first heard of the very concept of a Canadian version of Fox News, I bust out laughin’, and nothing has changed me mind about that. It’s a ridiculous idea and I have no doubt that such an enterprise will fall flat on its face and then deny it is flat on its face and try to dig to the center of the Earth with its teeth.

I have every faith that Canadians are perfectly capable of handling the presence of a horrible right wing crap factory of a television station. I think, in fact, that the people pushing for this station are vastly underestimating how strongly Canadians resent anything American intruding into our politics at all. The bigots and loons who want this station no doubt are slavering at the chance to import American hate and create their own little closed off loop of reality just like Fox News, but Canada is not America, and they would have been a hell of a lot better off avoiding the taint of the Fox News label altogether and creating something entirely new. The National Post Network, perhaps.

And honestly, as a Canadian and a comedian, I would love to have a Fox News North making my job easier. Hell, I might be able to make a full time job out of mocking everything they say and do. Me, Rick Mercer, Martin Short, and a whole pack of other funny Canadians will get together and make Daily Show North and the idiots will rue the day they stepped into our playground.

Because you see, we Canadians are a very, very funny people. That’s why three quarters of the writers on the Daily Show/Colbert are Canadian. We have an outsider’s point of view and a deep, deep sense of irony that comes from living in a nation which is, in many ways, completely absurd. We have a very strong history of putting the boots to public institutions and mocking anything and everything, and Fox News North would make a very easy, very juicy, very tempting target.

But still, I want to nice folks reading this to go and sign this petition because Stephen Harper is trying to push through Fox News North by replacing the current chair of the CRTC (Americans, it’s our equivlanet to your FCC) , and that is a shitty thing for even Stephen “Punch My Smug Smile In” Harper to do, and with a groundswell of support, maybe we Canadians can head that off at the pass.

I don’t fear Fox News, but I don’t believe in politicians replacing important government officials simply for doing their job, and I especially don’t like Stephen Harper, so this shit has to be stopped.

Make them listen, folks. Add your voice and let it be heard : STOP STEPHEN HARPER.

To hell with him and his scumbag populism.

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Cute! : Shelter for homeless cats

Sep 2

Posted by MegaWordMan in Links, News, Odd | No Comments

Um, sorry, Robbery Story Lady. You just got bumped.

Now this guy who built a big cat rescue/cat haven on a tree farm is my Hero of the Day.

And it all started with one cat, his son’s cat, named Pepper. That cat is a hero too, because by getting to know that one cat, Craig Grant, founder, owner, and operator of the Caboodle Ranch, went from someone who thought they didn’t like cats to a man who has done more for cats in his area than probably anyone else ever will.

So here’s to Pepper as well. You made one heck of a convert.

He bought the tree farm, and as he kept acquiring more and more homeless kitties, he expanded the place, so all the kitties could roam free. But because sometimes kitties need shelter, he has also built his feline friends many, many beautiful “cat houses” for them to escape into when the weather gets wet.

Being a life long cat lover, I heartily approve. In writer’s terms, which is how I tend to think of things, he takes cats with often very sad stories before coming to him, and turns those into very happy stories as the cats go from the hard and cruel life of a stray to, essentially, Cat Heaven.

As I have mentioned before, I grew up in a house full of cats. My parents never quite intended to end up with eight cats, but they had two, and then a stray cat we eventually named Blossom adopted us by having a litter right on our back step, so we had her and her litter, and then she and her daughter Ace both got pregnant in the same year a few years later, and well, you can only give away so many kittens before the market is glutted and if you still have kittens left, they are yours forever.

And one of those cats from Blossom’s first litter, the very one who got pregnant with her later in fact, a smart little cookie my sister Anne named Ace after (I kid you not) Ace Frehly of the band KISS, worked a similar conversion as Pepper’s on my father.

In the past, my father had somewhat grumpily tolerated the cat pack we had acquired, but he was an old fashioned type of guy who thinks men like dogs and women like cats and that was fine by him. But that was not good enough for Ace. She set out to conquer him with charm by a very long campaign of sitting closer and closer to His Chair, going away when he shooed her but always coming back, wearing him down over time till she went from sitting near his chair, to sitting on the arm of his chair, to sitting right there in his lap getting petted and stroked and praised and using her surprisingly loud purr at maximum volume, looking downright pleased with herself for having, essentially, conquered Mount Everest in local cat terms.

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News : Bears, pot, and dog food

Sep 1

Posted by MegaWordMan in Canada, Odd | 1 Comment

This story SO need video!

Cops went to bust a British Columbia couple for growing pot (growing pot? Around HERE? Never!), and they found the pot alright… over 1000 plants, in fact… but that is not all they found.

They also found seventeen mild mannered bears wandering around. The couple had apparently been feeding the bears dog food, and they were quite amiable and nonthreatening, ambling about like big house pets and even trying to climb into a squad car at one point.

The local officials have told the couple to keep on feeding those bears until they go into hibernation in November, which presumably means they won’t be hauling said couple off to jail at least until then.

The idea is that after the bears wake up from their long winter’s nap, they will amble off in search of other food sources. Right now, if their food supply was suddenly cut off, the bears would certainly suffer, and might begin to pose a threat to humans as well. The theory is that it will be easier for everyone if the bears have hibernation as a buffer.

I am not sure that plan will work, but I am also not sure what WOULD work.

There has been some irresponsible media speculation that the bears were fed and domesticated specifically to guard the pot growing operation, but according to officials, if that was the intention, they did a very poor job of it because the bears were so friendly and mellow that they didn’t deter the cops at all.

I would argue that the mere sight of seventeen bears hanging around would be a pretty strong deterrent for at least the average potential pot thief or organized “ripper”. They don’t have to do anything, just hang around being big freaking bears. That will do the trick.

People are also assuming that the bears are so mellow and friendly because they have been hand fed by humans for so long that they are semi-domesticated, and probably think of the humans as funny looking bears who knew how to get good food.

That is no doubt true. But I think it overlooks the obvious : the bears are stoned.

I mean, why not? We are mammals, they are mammals. We are omnivores, they are omnivores. We appreciate a nice herbal buzz, maybe they do too.

So in order to maintain the status quo, the couple in question might well have to keep at least some of their pot plants as well, in order to keep the bears in both their habitat and their habit. If those bears don’t get to wake n’ bake and maybe do a little afternoon delight or midnight bait, they might get all grumpy and strung out, and that might well be both inhumane and hilarious. I mean dangerous.

I have to admit, I am very amused by the idea of this huge marijuana grow op with its own squadron of black bear mascots/guards just wandering about without a care. I am quite pro-marijuana legalization and so the fact that the couple are big time pot growers does not bother me one white. I am happy they have a successful business going. And I imagine that, until the authorities showed up to ruin their fun for no damned good reason, it was quite the cozy little lifestyle they had going. A nice place way out in the country, plenty of cash for luxuries, a highly profitable little hobby farm going, and some very agreeable and unique pets/roomies/friends to share it with. I am kind of jealous, honestly. Sounds like a great job for a writer like me. Though I might spend all my time with the bears.

Because honestly, that sounds pretty awesome. Being a big fat hairy mellow type myself, I have always liked bears, and having a whack of them around to pal around with (carefully!) would be pretty awesome. Other people have dogs. You have bears. Awesome.

I wonder if they named them all and treated them like pets, or did they just leave the food out and live in fear? I hope it is the former. I hope they become great friends with all the black bears, and being out there was like a cross between Grizzly Adams and Weeds.

Hey, there could be a wacky Canadian drama-comedy in all of this. Call it MJ and the Bears. Brett Butt his hilarious wife play the eccentric couple with the friendly bears who get into all kinds of trouble dodging the local authorities and trying to keep one step ahead of bumbling American DEA agents (played by Eugene Levy and Rick Moranis) who are in Canada illegally and who are always trying to “get them” so they can finally get that big promotion and move back to the USA. Luba Goy can play the couple’s extremely ethnic aunt of no specific ethnicity, Michael J. Fox can cameo as a wealthy patron who needs the couple’s pot to control his illness, and it can all be shot here in beautiful British Columbia.

Just think of the celebrity guest stars you could get. Snoop Dog would be a cinch. So would Kevin Smith, and maybe even John “On WEED?” Stewart!

With myself, of course, as head writer, executive producer,and assistant bear wrangler.

What do you think, folks? Would you watch it?

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Science : The story of Thorium

Aug 31

Posted by MegaWordMan in Science | No Comments

You know all about thorium, right? Me neither.

But it turns out this substance, normally just another lonely star of the periodic table of elements, could actually be the key to a free energy nuclear powered future.

Imagine that. Electricity from the element named after the Norse god Thor. God of Thunder, indeed!

When used as fuel for a nuclear reactor based around it, thorium produces 200 times as much energy per ton as uranium, and 3.5 MILLION times as much as coal.

According to the article, “a mere fistful could light London for a week. ” Hard to imagine, isn’t it? But phenomenally exciting if true.

Apparently thorium also “eats its own waste”, a disturbing image, but in this context, it means it is very clear. It can even be used to clean the waste of other, messier nuclear processes. How is that for neat and clean and greener than green?

This sounds simply phenomenal. And the best part is, thorium is incredibly easy to find. It’s everywhere. Right now, it is currently thought of as a nuisance mineral, something that gets in the way when you are trying to find something useful like uranium. That all could change.

I am very strongly pro nuclear energy. I think the world and especially the environmental movement really shot themselves in the foot when they embraced anti-nuclear hysteria in the wake of events like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Done properly, with modern building and engineering techniques and a superior fuel like thorium, nuclear power could solve all the world’s energy needs for thousands of years to come.

No more wars for oil in the Middle East. In fact, thorium power would allow us to acheive a personal dream of mind : completely ignoring the damned Middle East. I think it would only be fair that, after we ditch fossil fuels for good, the rest of the world should get to completely ignore what happens in the Middle East for at least fifty years as payment for them forcing us to care for all this time.

We will just build a dome over Israel and say “Guess what? You’re on your own. Kill each other, cut each other’s limbs off, stone people to death, we don’t care. We are leaving for good and from now on, your problems are your own to solve. Have fun!”

Imagine electricity being as cheap and ubiquitous as water. In fact, with plentiful energy, all our concerns about global clean water supply disappear as well. Cheap energy makes purifying and distributing clean water easy, even easier than we in the modern world consider it now.

The problem, as it always is when you are talking energy, is money. It would take a really enormous investment in order to develop thorium reactor technology. It would have to be a Manhattan Project scale project, probably the sort of thing it would take, at the very least, a multinational body like the EU to finance and oversee. In fact, it is the sort of thing that would likely require the investment of all the modern nations of the world in order to make it into a reality.

The prize is worth it, but politicians are notoriously (and, for the most part, quite prudently) unwilling to commit vast amounts of tax dollars to mega-projects which could easily turn into very expensive boondoggles and make their legacies turn into ones of foolishness, excess optimism, and corruption.

So I have no idea where the political will to make this sort of thing a reality would come from. Not only would it be expensive, but you just know the loonie left would be freaking out because the word “nuclear” is in there somewhere and NUCLEAR is SCARY BAD EVIL ICKY STUFF and MEAN and DIRTY and makes baby bunnies cry themselves to sleep at night!

Sadly, then, it looks like it would take some sort of miracle to make thorium power a reality. If we are saved from fossil fuels, it will likely be by something easier to get going and able to be developed on a smaller scale and by private industry.

I am not too worried. We have a lot of irons in the fire for alternate energy right now, many of which are quite promising, so I am hopeful that one or more of those will pan out in the next decade or so and we will see a revolution as big as the switch from wood to coal and coal to gasoline in my lifetime, if not bigger.

If anyone unlocks the thorium genie, it will likely be a country like China or India, where the sheer size of their economies makes big projects a lot more possible.

Whatever country does get to the thorium prize first will have an unparalleled economic advantage over all their competitors. as well, of course, as an enormous amount of prestige and credibility when it comes time to talk about the environment.

Whoever it is, I just hope when they are done gloating, they will sell the technology to the rest of us.

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News : Latest news in eggs

Aug 30

Posted by MegaWordMan in Odd, World | 1 Comment

According to this article, the egg industry is now blaming the victims of their tainted eggs for not cooking their eggs for long enough.

Really, egg people? REALLY? Here’s the quote :

“Consumers that were sickened reportedly all ate eggs that were not properly or thoroughly cooked. Eggs need to be cooked so that the whites and yolks are firm (not runny), which should kill any bacteria,” says Mitch Head, spokesman for the United Egg Producers.

REALLY, Egg Guy Mitch “Egg” Head? Over 1400 people have gotten sick from your damned eggs. You are saying every single one of them undercooked their eggs? You are sure of that, so sure that you are willing to risk the worst kind of PR, the blaming-the-victim kind?

And all my life, some people have been eating their eggs runny and this is the first time I have heard that this was a horrible risky thing that no sane person should ever do. Are you saying all those times I quite thoroughly enjoyed a soft-boiled egg and toast to dip in, I was risking my very life, and somehow this information just never got to…. anybody?

And the thing is, you have already recalled the eggs, so you are as much as admitting the eggs are at fault. If you thought you were blameless, you should have refused to recall. Now if you have already recalled millions of eggs, it looks like you are two-faced and playing the martyr. This is a very bad reaction
to being caught in public with egg on your face. (Sorry. Had to do it. All stories about this egg thing have got to have at least one egg related put or reference. I am serious. A man came while I was typing this and told me. He was very scary. I’m a little freaked out right now. )

Taking the blame is not fun. There is always the urge to try to weasel out of it, to deflect blame, to refuse to take responsibility for your actions or your mistakes.

But when the public is mad at your industry, there is nothing worse you can do than to try to shift the blame in such a patently transparent and unconvincing manner. It just makes people much angrier, and shifts this from an “oops”, which the public is likely to forgive (after all, mistakes happens, and people do love their eggs, they are unlikely to just stop eating them) into a big “fuck you” to the very people you need to placate, and fast. Not smart.

Honestly, it is wise to take the blame even when you are not entirely sure you are entirely at fault. People will be more likely to forgive and forget, and might even take your side if you show sufficient contrition. This blaming the victim shit is public relations suicide.

So ignore the farmers egging you on, come out of your hard shell, and wise up before you REALLY lay an egg and hurt your whole industry.

(The scary guy made me do that. He is still looking at me. Who let this guy in here, anyhow?)

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World : The Sun nails a Nazi

Aug 30

Posted by MegaWordMan in World | 1 Comment

Well, as much as I normally cordially loathe The London Sun for their blatant yellow journalism, screechingly shrill editorial voice, and a writing style that makes me want to find the person who wrote that smarmy pile of crap and whack them about with a good solid umbrella…. I have to admit, they done good.

There are times when having the morals and restraint of baying hounds out for blood actually turns out to be useful for something other than making the lives of famous people miserable, and in this case, that thing is hunting down escaped Nazis.

Sure, they are only doing it for the lurid headline and cheap feeling of moral superiority, but regardless of their motives, they did a good thing.

I am normally a person who adds a fair bit of mercy to his hot cups of justice. I dislike the punitive mindset strongly, I do not think justice and vengeance are ever the same thing, and I think the justice system’s main job is finding out the truth and putting people who have identified themselves as dangerous someplace where they can do less harm, not punishment or revenge. Just protection.

But there can be no escape from crimes against humanity. I do not care how old, how feeble, how contrite, how mournful, how photogenic, or how exemplary this Nazi is, he needs to go to jail for his crimes. The message has to be firmly reinforced that for some things, there is no statute of limitations, no loopholes, no time off for good behaviour. You will never be safe, never be able to relax, never be able to know, for sure, that the authorities will not show up tomorrow morning and take you away from your friends and your family and the life you have built and make your shame known to the world when they take you to court and make you face your crimes, and pay the price.

This is one of those rare cases where I think keeping the person alive is more cruel, but more just, than execution. Their terrible crimes should be listed right next to their faces on every newspaper and television news program in the world so that everyone knows what they did, and then they should be left to rot in prison so they can know the shame for as long as possible.

So the old guy is 88. So what? The people he killed are still dead. That has not changed.

Pragmatically speaking, I have no idea if the thought of being pursued for their entire lives by the police of the entire world will ever cause someone to decide against committing a crime against humanity. As I understand it, these things generally happen in the heat of the moment, or from the influence of a system gone completely insane, and often the real motive for doing what you are told, even when it is a horrible crime and you know it, is the desire not to be the next one to die. Fascist regimes are notoriously conformist, and I can understand how someone might do terrible things out of a combination of the fear of consequences and the urge to conform.

But crimes against humanity transcend that. There has to be some kind of accounting for them, no matter how long it takes, if for no other reason than to be the public response, the active arm of the public’s reaction to these crimes.

People have to believe that there are some things you just plain cannot get away with.

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World : What not to bring to a papal visit

Aug 29

Posted by MegaWordMan in Odd, World | 1 Comment

OK, it is completely understandable that the Pope does not want there to be any vuvuzelas around when he does his next world tour. The things are damned irritating and if I was the Pope, the freaking Pope, I would hold fast that one of the privileges of my exalted position, let along my exalted age, would be that I don’t have to put up with morons making a sound like angry bees on the march everywhere I go.

I mean, show some respect people.

But that is not what really brought my attention to this story. It was this line here. Emphasis mine.

They join alcohol, barbecues, gazebos and candles on the “do not bring” list.

Excuse me, you want to run that by me again. Gazebos? GAZEBOS? Are people bringing their own gazebo to events these days? Has this become a problem somehow? Is there worldwide trend of people holding wild gazebo keggers at public event these days?

No really, it’s great, it’s like a tailgate party crossed with a garden party from the 20′s. We all get dressed up in straw hats and spats, there’s a brass band and a barbershop quartet, and it’s nothing but Dixie, Dixie, Dixie all day long! All the flappers and soda jerks and streetcar drivers will be there!

I mean, seriously, Pope Palpatine. Gazebos? How did that even get on the list? Did it just seem to go with the rest of the words somehow? Did you maybe have a Senior Moment and forget exactly what a gazebo was but thought it sounded like something bad so you put it in there just in case? I have always thought the word “gazebo” sounded like some exotic African animal. Maybe it’s what you get when you cross a gazelle with a zebra. Or zebro.

Or is this actually you showing a little papal humour and slipping something in there just to see if we are paying attention? If I was Pope, I would totally do things like that. Slip something about the Holiness of raspberry flavoured bubble gum into some thick, boring Papal document and see if anyone notices.

I mean, check out the entry for gazebo on the Wiki.

A gazebo is a pavilion structure, sometimes octagonal, in parks, gardens, and spacious public areas. Gazebos are freestanding or attached to a garden wall, roofed, and open on all sides; they provide shade, shelter, ornamental features in a landscape, and a place to rest. Some gazebos in public parks are large enough to serve as bandstands or rain shelters.

As an aside, I just have to mention how much I love the Internet. That is an extremely well written, informative, and descriptive definition of a gazebo. And I got it just by typing the word into the Wiki search box. That makes me happy.

Anyhow, back to my point : THIS is what you are worried about on your tour, Pope Nicer Than He Looks? Open-sided pavilion structures? This is a public menace to put alongside alcohol, vuvuzelas, and barbecues? What country of the world is so magnificently refined and relaxed that their biggest problem is kids and their damned gazebos? I want to go there! Maybe not to live, but I bet a visit would be very nice.

And did you know that in banning gazebos, you are also, according to Wiki, banning “pagodas, pavilions, kiosks, belvederes, follies, alambras, pergolas, and rotundas”? Are you sure you want to be known as the Pope who banned alambras? Are you sure you even know what the hell all those things are? Because I sure don’t. What the hell is a pergola?

Now I want to make posters that have the Pope’s image and a picture of a gazebo with a slash through it and slogans like “Pope Benedict says ‘Kids, if someone offers you a gazebo, just say no!’” or “Gazebo? I don’t think so!” or “Have you talked to your teenager about gazebos?”

I mean seriously, Benedict. Gazebos?

What the fuck, man?

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LOL : Okanagan Beef Drinks Wine

Aug 29

Posted by MegaWordMan in Canada, Odd | 1 Comment

Some beef farmers here in British Columbia, in the Okanagan region (otherwise known as “wine country” around here), have started giving their cows a little wine to go with their feed.

This is not, apparently, just a ploy to get them in the mood to make more cows. Enthusiasts claim that it gives the beef a unique flavour, finer marbling, and “fat that tastes like candy”.

Beef flavoured candy, I guess. Or is it more like wine gums? I love those! I’m such a wino.

But how do the cows like it? How do they react? Here’s the quote that made me decide I had to blog about this amusing new trend :

“It definitely changes their personalities. They moo a lot more with each other. They get really chatty,” she said.

Now THAT is an adorable image. Chatty cattle! Just sitting around, shooting the breeze and chewing the cud. Exchanging all the latest cow gossip, discussing cow trends, learning to be philosophical about their inevitable beefy doom. Being all mellow and bovine and relaxed.

And it is important that your beef cattle be relaxed :

“Cattle that are relaxed taste better,” she said. “You don’t want tense beef.”

You don’t want tense beef. I feel like I somehow always knew that, deep down, and her telling me is just a reminder of something I learned a long time ago.

The “she” in the above quotes is Janice Ravndahl of Kelowna’s Sezmu Meats, the bold pioneer behind this trend. She got the idea after seeing a television show featuring beer-swilling pigs. (the animal kind, not the kind that fill the bars. )

I have to admit, I’m pretty curious to try this unique beef. I love wine and I love rich beef dishes, so it would seem like a match made in heaven. And being a sensitive carnivore, I would be happy in knowing that my beef came from cows that had a merry, drunken life. You can taste the karma!

Now I am picturing drunken cows falling over and laughing so hard that milk squirts out their nose.

“Woops, there goes Margaret! Ooh, she’ll be an hour getting back up, that one!”

Imagine that said in a screechy working class British accent.

Sooner or later, one of them gets tired of waiting for it to happen on its own , and the next thing you know, the cows are tipping each other.

The morning finds drunken cows sprawled out all over the fields like used tissues, empty wine bottles lying in the feed bin, and somehow, someone got a traffic cone.

Oh my god, now I have to know : can cows get hung over?

Because honestly, the only think funnier than drunk cows might be grumpy, surly hung-over cows.

Cows with headaches. Cows with dry tongue. Cows with BAD ATTITUDES.

The thing is, dairy cows probably have some dim idea that they work for a living. Beef cattle have no idea. To them, it’s a long vacation of a life until the very end. Maybe now and then someone bosses them around and every now and then, some weird guy called a “vet” shows up and sticks his hand up someplace rather private, but otherwise, it’s like they are living on a cruise ship, in cow terms.

And now there is even an open bar! Imagine that.

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