Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

There's the pitter-patter sound of feet in our apartment, and it's not because we're making a bunch of gerbils run across a piece of corrugated metal. Though if one were to hazard a guess, the gerbils aren't that far off. The curious menagerie in our apartment has increased, and the family (as it were) has grown by one new member. For the longest time, Shady's wanted a playmate--a desire that has been rather unique in that she's terrified of any other dog aside from her littermates, but adores playing with cats to no end.

The original plan was to acquire a kitten, preferrably from an animal shelter or humane society. Mel especially wanted a little bundle of fur to squeak all over and coddle. We were hoping to use some of our $-mas money to buy said kitten, and later on go through the rigours of declawing and neutering/spaying said feline. And then, much to our surprise, Chance unexpectedly dropped into our laps.

Chance's history is filled with a lot of close calls, and even greater luck. He and his littermates were abandoned in a box by the side of the road somewhere outside Oshawa. Luckily, someone noticed the box and rescued the kittens before anything unpleasant happened. The kittens were brought to a local veterinary clinic, and all save for Chance were adopted. One of the employees, not wanting Chance to be left on his own, volunteered to take him in, despite her low-degree asthma. For the last few months, she had been searching (mostly in vain) for owners willing to take Chance in. The few potentials all were dubious at best, and so Chance remained with her for almost 4-5 months.

Earlier in the fall, she joined the veterinary clinic my sister was working at, destined to be my sister's replacement. They spent less than a week working together before my sister had to leave. But when my sister called the clinic about a week ago, to catch up on things and see how everyone was doing, Chance's surrogate owner asked, "Say, you wouldn't know anyone who was wanting a cat, would you?" And my sister, knowing what Mel & I were shopping around for, answered, "Why yes, funny that you should mention it."

Before you could say, "Stop spinning the litterbox, I'm making a mess on the walls", Mel & I had adopted Chance. And he's proven to be an amazing find: he came declawed and neutered, with all of his first-year shots. He was raised with a Jack Russel (a.k.a. "crack on spring legs"), so he was used to dogs and in fact enjoyed playing with them. And his temporary owner was more than happy to give Chance away without receiving any payment; all she wanted was to know he was going to a good home. She even threw into the deal his litter box, food bowls, toys, and all the litter and catfood he still had.

In light of all that he's had to go through--with being abandoned, rejected by anyone who really looked at him, and wanted by people who in all likelihood would have ignored or abused him--the name we gave him is more than appropriate. He's a cat who's been lucky with a lot of second chances, thus ensuring he hasn't had to frivolously spend any of his nine lives.

It's been about 3 days now since Shady and Chance first learned of each other's existence. And while Chance is starting to warm up to Shady, he's a bit stand-offish. Which is understandable, considering that Shady is still so excited about her new roomie that she has to run over and sniff his butt whenever she sees him. Other than that, they are learning to play together, and Chance has taken to his new digs, as well as cuddling up to Mel and myself. (Furry suck that he is.)

Though Chance is not without his eccentricities. For starters, he growls exactly like a dog. It's difficult to tell sometimes whether it's the cat or the dog who's just growled. So now we have a trirumvate of odd pets: there's a cat who sometimes acts like a dog; a dog who I think believes she's a cat; and a fish who admittedly doesn't seem strange, outside of his 4-second memory span. All we need is a narcoleptic penguin and we've got a veritable zoo of natural curiosities. Anyone seen one at the animal shelters?

Today's Lesson: true love is typing out your wife's essay from paper onto the computer while she's still working on it, even when you could be writing something else, and then only realizing after the fact that you could have in fact been writing something else, and in the end not really caring anyways.


posted by Phillip at 4:18 PM

 

Descriptive, cleverly Brit-sounding words and phrases to describe this escape me:

http://www.prattle.net/archives/001659.html

Granted, the weblink there connects only to a report on the page in question. While the original page seems to no more be amongst the lviing or Internet-working (decide for yourself if a sardonic "alas" should be added here), here's just a brief hint of what to expect before you click:

This site is dedicated to spreading the Gospel in the werewolf and furry communities. It is my hope that many trans-species people will accept Jesus as their Savior through this ministry. I will explain the etymology of this website's name. I got the idea from Werewolf Tobias' tradition of calling a werewolf stronghold a House. Well, I'm a dragon, so my ideal stronghold would be a Castle. And since this is MY website where I am MASTER, I call this my Castle.

As I said, words and clever Brit-sounding descriptions escape me. Though I now have this image of a particularly deluded were-otter typing up a storm on an online message board....

Today's Lesson: there is no limit to humanity's eccentricity. (Or stupidity. The words may very well be interchangeable.)


posted by Phillip at 5:49 AM

 

You find the darnedest things inside a giant squid these days: small fish, pieces of an unruly killer whale. And then sometimes you find this.... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6510728/


LIMA, Peru - Peruvian police said on Monday they seized nearly 1,540 pounds (700 kg) of cocaine hidden in frozen giant squid bound for Mexico and the United States. The drugs were covered in pepper to divert sniffer dogs and sealed in several layers of plastic and other wrappers. Police had been on the trail since August.< style="font-style: italic;">

Seven people were arrested in the drug seizure. Police said the haul would have a street value of about $17.5 million. Peru is the world’s No. 2 cocaine producer after Colombia, and many of its drugs end up on U.S. streets after being sent via Mexico.


Or if calamari isn't your thing, how about some sandwiches? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6511148/

Virgin Mary grilled cheese’ sells for $28,000
MIAMI - A woman who said her 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich bore the image of the Virgin Mary will be getting a lot more bread after the item sold for $28,000 on eBay. GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, confirmed that it placed the winning bid, and company executives said they were willing to spend “as much as it took” to own the 10-year-old half-sandwich with a bite out of it. “It’s a part of pop culture that’s immediately and widely recognizable,” spokesman Monty Kerr told The Miami Herald. “We knew right away we wanted to have it.”

< style="font-style: italic;">Photos posted on eBay show what can be viewed as a woman’s face emblazoned on the sandwich, a bite taken out of one end. Bidding closed Monday. In a statement, GoldenPalace.com CEO Richard Rowe said he planned to use the sandwich to raise money for charity. Kerr and Steve Baker, CEO of GoldenPalace’s management company, Cyberworld Group, flew to south Florida on Monday to make arrangements for a sandwich handover from its owner, Diana Duyser.

< style="font-style: italic;">“I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary Mother of God,” Duyser, a work-from-home jewelry designer, said in the casino’s statement. The online auction site initially pulled the sale, saying it didn’t post joke items. The page was restored after the company was convinced that Duyser would deliver on the bid, said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy.

Duyser said she took a bite after making the sandwich 10 years ago and saw a face staring back at her. She put the sandwich in a clear plastic box with cotton balls and kept it on her night stand. She said the sandwich has never sprouted a spore of mold.

Today's Lesson: nature is a strange and wondrous thing to behold. Though sometimes the things we humans do to nature is even stranger.


posted by Phillip at 8:45 PM

 

The day couldn't have started out more ominous for me. It's not even 10:30am yet, and already I have found myself trapped at a summer camp, been chased by an oven-black lobster roughly the size of a toilet seat, although this was only after I had discovered that the neat $104 dollar bill I'd found was in fact counterfeit. (How was I supposed to know?) And just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I was subjected to a small horde of Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street characters trying to break this token-generic-Anime-babe out from her cabin (though in their Muppety defense, they were under the influence of mind control at the time), which was really a bad thing since this token-generic-Anime-babe was trying to steal Mel from me.

If this is what it's like to remember your dreams, then suddenly I'm rather pleased to have had great difficulty recalling any prior ones for months on end.

In other news, I need to get my ears cleaned, since last night Mel made a comment to me, and I translated it as, "furniture gay." Which naturally perplexed me to no end, as I'm not used to giving furniture a specific gender, let alone a specific gender orientation.

Oh well.

Today's Lesson: as Freud himself once said regarding dreams, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." $104 dollar bills and maniacal tarantula-sized lobsters don't mean a thing...right? Right?!


posted by Phillip at 7:10 AM

 

Sometimes, what matters more than anything else is not what you know, or even what calibre weapons you are in possession, but it's where you are. Last year, our kiosk was situated near a major intersection with jewellry and telephone stores around us. This year, we're right in the midst of three major clothing stores. The significance of this? All three stores enjoy blasting their music so anyone in the mall promenade can hear it.

So tonight, I was able to close up the kiosk while enjoying Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus, as opposed to visualizing the many psychotic and no doubt painful things I would inflict upon Mariah Carey for her rendition of All I Want For Christmas (Is You). I'd rather reach out and touch faith, thank you very much.

Or, as Kevin would say after watching Buffy season 3: "Reach out and touch Faith." (Amazing how one litlte capitalized letter can turn something philosophical into sex. Then again, most of the best philosophy out there revolves around sex or intimacy in one way, shape or form. Though "I boink, therefore I am" seems more like a line that Havoc, and not Descartes, would say.)

In the meantime, many things have happened in the world.

Mel & I visited Kevin and Donna. There we discovered that I possess the superhuman ability to induce farts from Gabriel whenever he's in my arms. He won't really do it around anyone else, but place him in my arms, and he'll almost instantly let loose with an attack of flatulence. Let someone else pick him up, and the farting ceases. We also discovered that when I play Grand Theft Auto: San Anwhatever, my car is inexplicably attracted to the nearest inanimate object and must crash into it.

Carly and her fiance also stopped over for a weekend visit, and while going through old family photos (as part of a present to our Dad, who will be spending Christmas in Nova Scotia), I must say there's nothing so interesting as to hear one's own sister exclaim, "Good God! Look at me in these pictures! I look like a special needs child!"

And currently it appears that Shady is trying to muscle in on Mel's plate of tater tots, after already having gorfed down a small legion left for her in her food dish. I should probably intervene before Shady tries to point behind Mel, and try to get her to look away. (The tactic's worked for Shady before, I'm chagrined to say...)

Carnivorous Forest update: still refusing to eat the heroes. Have since resorted to attempting to bribe it, and hiding the heroes under a pile of choclate, but the forest seems the be onto my plans.

Today's Lesson: the most unexpected joys can arrive in the unlikeliest of packages, and through the oddest connections.


posted by Phillip at 7:09 PM

 

...and other really wrong ideas I feel the need to share with everyone else. Not for posterity or enlightenment. Not even for those tingly feelgood sensations you get after watching an After-School Special movie. (Or else the tingling sensation was that burrito you ate before the movie.) No, ultimately I just want to scare people.

Or does the concept of a "Pop-Up Book of Venereal Diseases" not scare you? Or if that didn't work, how about this?

Good Idea: for family night, you rent the movie "Puss In Boots."
Bad Idea: for family night, you rent the movie "Pussies N' Boots."

Scared yet? If you're not, you're probably deranged like me, which is probably a good thing. After all, fear is a curious phenomeon. Lovecraft tells us that the most primal of all human emotions is fear, and the greatest of those fears is fear of the unknown. Tiawon Gongloe states that we should fear nothing, but fear itself. And Largo insists that we must PH43R his lack of B33R!

Everyone experiences fear at one point in time (or each day) in their life. I'll admit I was scared today when I discovered that I've now achieved new levels of corporate whoring. We received a new manual taking us through the rigours of some fancy new things the computer can do. One of which was a spiffy upgrade to the personnel files. The instruction manual decided to give a randomly selected name as a demonstration for how to input a new employee into the system. And guess which name was listed in the manual?

No, it wasn't that man, Yang Wen-li. And no, it wasn't Cthulhu either.

Yep, I blinked a few times upon seeing my name in there, first and last: Smith, Phillip. They even had the spelling right too. Now I understand that in signing up with the company, I've become a corporate whore. I'm tainted. And I'm all right with that. I can accept and deal with that. On the other hand, if I'm going to be whored out by the company, I'd like to be notified of it beforehand. Maybe even get a cut of the profits. Otherwise I feel violated somehow. If we ever run short of money, Mel & I already have an agreement where she will pimp me out to Boystown in Toronto. I may not get much of a profit, but at least I'm aware of this beforehand.

Quote of the Day: "[What were my parents like?] They were great. They tasted a lot like chicken"; as spoken by David Boreanez from Angel: Sense & Sensitivity.


posted by Phillip at 5:39 PM

 

Christmas music has begun to play in the mall. There are now 42 days left until the suffering ends.

In other news, I was going through old family photographs last night, and was dismayed to learn that for a time, I looked like one of the Hanson brothers. (On a related note, once again someone randomly commented how I look like Harry Potter. I should try to find a way to milk this somehow.)

Today's Lesson: read the small print on any store sign before you ask questions. It makes you look less like an idiot, and makes me less wanting to strangle you with our kiosk's complimentary Customer Appreciation Scarf.

Man-Eating Forest Update: still balking, and still vegetarian.



posted by Phillip at 3:34 PM

 

I am rather annoyed right at the moment. In the current story I'm trying to write, there is a forest that likes to eat people. Right now my protagonists are in said forest, and for some inexplicable reason the forest is refusing to eat them. I can't say this is all bad; the resulting extended scenes have some added character development I hadn't expected to see in this part. But at the same time I cannot help but wonder at how difficult it is to just have the forest come right out and (try to) devour them.

Why won't it eat them? Aren't they beautiful enough for it? Has the forest already eaten too much this month, and is worried about putting on weight? It feels like I'm having to coax a non-compliant child at the dinner table.

Me (the author): "Come on, try it! Just a spoonful of heroes. You'll see that you like it."

Man-Eating Forest: (shaking its head) "Mmm-mmm."

Me: "What's the matter? We've been planning this meal for months. All you could talk about for a time was eating these people. Just open your mouth a little bit, and try some. It's not bad. Not like that jar of 'creamed ogres' you ate last week."

Man-Eating Forest: "You can't make me."

This could only get worse if the man-eating forest turns out to be bulemic and coughs them back up somewhere. Or else the forest has scanned ahead to the end of the scene, and discovered it actually doesn't like the taste of our heroes (one in particular). It still seems ridiculously peculiar that despite my being the author, the story is currently putting me through the rigours and not the other way around. This really does throw the whole concept of the creative process out the window (though hopefully someone opened the window first before any glass was shattered), since--at least with me--the story is the one that usually tells me what happens next, and not the other way around.

Certainly there are scenes I have sketched out, endings planned and even specific events that must take place at key times in any story. But to have the story, or to be more precise the man-eating forest in it, pull this filibuster tactic, as if thinking this will prevent me from ever having it try to eat the protagonists, feels like any authority I had as an author is being totally undermined.

In other news that may surely one day bruise my rampaging ego, I have been MSTied. I can't honestly complain, since it's a pretty good MST, and besides I deliberately wrote this story as a horrible piece of self-inserted schlock just for the fun of it. And mostly to hurt people's brains: fibi.wishing-blue.net/viewtopic.php?t=103

Man-Eating Forest Status: going vegetarian.


posted by Phillip at 5:41 AM

 

Well, things have happened since the last little bit of nowhere. Kevin & Donna have been moved from Stratford to Brantford. Mel saw the Aurora Borealis for the first time. Stories have been written (or in some cases, partially written) involving cats plotting against goblins, and large wolves debating with unlucky bastards. I also had peculiar dreams involving my laptop being melted by lava in my old family basement, and me riding/steering a city bus down a large hill into large enemy cannon towers. (No, even I'm not sure what the hell any of that means...though I imagine Freud would still blame my mother for it.)

In the meantime, I've been collecting thoughts and a various number of articles all revolving around villains and the evil things they do. Or in some cases, the evil they have or had allegedly/debatably done. With my brain currently on the "blue screen of death" mode, I hope to make my own remarks in a later bit of nowhere, but for now, sit back and ruminate on notable villains recent and not so.

We begin with villains who appear to be misunderstood, though if the fact that it took the Catholic Church a few hundred years to admit they were wrong and Galileo was right is any indication, I somehow doubt the Protestant Churches will be agreeing with the government's decision anytime soon.

'Witches' pardoned after 400 years
From correspondents in London
October 30, 2004

A SCOTTISH town is to mark Halloween by granting official legal pardons to 81 supposed witches executed during a frenzy of religious fervour about 400 years ago. Descendants of some of the women put to death in Prestonpans, just east of Edinburgh, will attend a ceremony to mark the witch hunts in the town during the late 16th and 17th centuries.

More than 3500 Scots were executed amid a resurgence in Catholic feeling during the Reformation period that reached a peak under King James VI, later crowned King James I of England. Many were condemned on evidence such as owning a black cat or cursing a neighbour who subsequently fell ill. Among those executed was one woman who confessed under torture to leading a coven responsible for a storm intended to sink the king's ship as he returned from Denmark with his fiancee.

The 81 pardons were obtained in the Prestoungrange Baronial Court, an ancient body which will be abolished next month under a law removing the last vestiges of feudal authority in Scotland. At this weekend's ceremony, the pardons will be publicly declared, and a wreath laid at a specially commissioned plaque.

Local historian Roy Pugh, who presented evidence about the witches' cases to the court, said it would be a "simple and solemn" ceremony. "It will recognise the crimes that were perpetrated against these people," he said. "It's too late to apologise, but it's a sort of symbolic recognition that these people were put to death by hysterical ignorance and paranoia."

A spokeswoman for the court, Adele Conn, said the pardons would be for convictions under the Witchcraft Act 1735. "There were some concerns that we've got the ceremony on Halloween, but we couldn't have a witches remembrance in the middle of March," she said. "It has a serious purpose; we're respecting these unfortunate individuals."


Next up on the roster, we have...not surprisingly, especially in the wake of all the election fruh-frah:

Bush Would Be Perfect Kids' Villain - Author Pullman
05/11/2004 12:33:01 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - For children's fantasy writer Philip Pullman, George W. Bush would make a perfect villain in his epic sagas of good and evil. "He would fit right in," said the British author of the trilogy "His Dark Materials" which now looks set to follow in the cinematic footsteps of Harry Potter and The Lord of The Rings as the next blockbuster franchise. "Bush has this baying certainty and has imposed this fervent zealotry," said Pullman whose books have been condemned by church groups for attacking organized religion.

"The Christian right in America is the mirror image of the Islamic fundamentalists," he added.


And finally, a question of which happens to be the lesser of two evils:

Victims' families angered by new Bernardo movie
CTV.ca News Staff

A Hollywood movie about notorious killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo is sparking outrage, despite the producer's assurances it won't be exploitive. Billed as "the incredible true story of Canada's most lethal couple," the movie Deadly has already been shot for the relatively low budget of less than $5 million US.

But Tim Danson, the lawyer who represented the families of victims Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, says there's no need for such a film. "The public has what they want. They don't need anymore," Danson told CTV News. "There is nothing served at this point in time for a graphic, detailed re-presentation in Hollywood format of my clients' violation."

The film's Los Angeles-based producer, however, says the story of a couple without conscience is one that needs to be told. "This story has a particularly compelling quality to it -- two people who were, to all intents and purposes, a happy, beautiful young couple who were able to descend into such a dark place," Quantum Entertainment's Michael Sellers told CTV, explaining that people need to understand how that can happen.

And besides, Sellers says, he's taken several steps to protect the victims and their relatives. "The victims' family's situation is something that weighs heavily on all our minds. We changed all the names and we didn't have them physically resemble the victims. The actresses are over 18. We tried to show as much sensitivity as we could."

In addition, he says Deadly, which is now being edited, won't make it to Canada. "We have no distributor in Canada, and honestly we have mixed feelings," he said. "I specifically reserved the right not to distribute in Canada. That's where it stands right now. There's still a lot of steps ahead of us."

Actress Laura Prepon, who also plays Donna on That 70s Show, will take on the role of Homolka. Misha Collins of 24 plays Bernardo. Quantum will release the film early next year, just months before Homolka is due to be released from a maximum-security prison in Quebec.

Bernardo was declared a dangerous offender after he was convicted in the sex slayings of French and Mahaffy in 1995. He's serving a life sentence with no chance of parole. There was a public outcry when Homolka struck a plea bargain with the authorities, cutting her sentence down to 12 years on two counts of manslaughter. Two years ago, Danson succeeded in halting a Canadian company's plans to film their own version of the case.

Today's Lesson: the longer the dry-spell duration, the harder it becomes to pick anything back up and resume as if nothing had ever stopped...especially when it comes to writing little bits of nowhere.


posted by Phillip at 8:21 PM

 

It's legendary. It's infamous. It's one of those fabled artefacts that stirs the imagination and ignites...er, tingling in the loins? Yes indeed, this little bit of nowhere is all about the Hello Kitty vibrator. The article itself can be found here, for posterity sake of course:

http://www.asiansexgazette.com/asg/japan/japan02news06.htm

The history of the Hello Kitty vibrator

By Peter Payne
October 4, 2004

Sanrio is one of the top character licensors in the world, having more or less created the business model of doing business by creating something that doesn't really exist and licensing its use to other companies. Sanrio produces nothing -- all their characters, like the Little Twin Star, Minna no Ta-bo, Bad Batz-Maru, exist as legal entities and nothing more. Their most successful character, Hello Kitty, or Kitty-chan as she's known in Japan, is now now thirty years old.

One of the many companies that license Sanrio's characters for their products was a Japanese company called Genyo Co. Ltd. Genyo made a wide variety of products, from bento boxes to children's toys to chopsticks, many with the Hello Kitty character on them. They scored big in the late 1990's with an off-the-wall hit, a series of Hello Kitty toys which featured a different Kitty figure from each of Japan's 47 prefectures, each representing something the prefecture was famous for. (The figure from Gunma Prefecture, where we live, represented a wooden kokeshi doll.)

In 1997, Genyo designed a product that would live in infamy: the Hello Kitty vibrating shoulder massager, which really is a shoulder massager (trust us -- it says so on the package). Sanrio approved this design without batting an eye, and the product enjoyed modest sales in toy shops and in family restaurants like Denny's and Coco's. It wasn't until 1999 or so that people began to catch on to the fact that the Hello Kitty massager had other potential uses, and with amazing speed, they started popping up in adult videos in Japan. The next thing anyone knew, they had changed into a cult adult item, sold in vending machines in love hotels -- after all, what self-respecting man wouldn't buy his girl a Hello Kitty vibrator when she asked him for one?

The emergence of the Hello Kitty vibrator as a cult adult item caused friction between Sanrio and Genyo, and Sanrio ordered the company to stop making the units. Genyo refused, since it had paid a lot of money to license Kitty for their products. There seemed nothing Sanrio could do, since they had approved the item for sale (see the official Sanrio sticker on the boxes). The answer came when the Japanese tax authorities raided Genyo on suspicion of tax evasion. It seems that some creative accounting was going on between the president of the company, a Mr. Nakamura, his vice president, and the owner of the factory in China where the units were made. All three were arrested, and Sanrio had the excuse needed to yank Genyo's license. They seized the molds used to make the vibrators and destroyed them.

And so, the sad, weird chapter of the Hello Kitty vibrator is at an end. The last of the Kitty vibes are gone, so now what will the world do for wacky comic -- and sexual -- relief?

More information: http://www.jlist.com

Quote of the Day: "It's interesting to observe how the whole concept of harassment has changed over the years. You know, in my day, 'harass' was two words."

(Followed immediately by me remarking, "You know, it's amazing your wife hasn't killed you yet.")


posted by Phillip at 8:56 PM

 

Welcome to Bush Country? seemed like a pretty good title. It was witty and semi-ironic, and I thought that it was necessary given how grave everyone else seems to be in light of the election and its outcome. Of course, now that I posted that little bit of nowhere, suddenly inspiration has to give me this the next day:

And the Lord spake unto Moses, "Go into Washington and tell the President these words from the I Am: Let my Democrates go."

Though I don't think we'll be able to get Charleton Heston to lead them out. But it would be interesting to have him exclaim how they can have his part-the-Niagra-staff when they pry it from his cold, dead hands.

Speaking of the book of Exodus... http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33168

Today's Lesson: inspiration is a fickle thing, and unfortunately it is the hand that feeds an author, so biting it tends to be counter-productive.


posted by Phillip at 7:17 PM

 

So George W. Bush wins the election after John Kerry concedes. Does that mean technically Bush won by default? To quote Homer Simpson: "The two sweetest words in the English language! De-fault!" For that matter, since he technically didn't win the last time around either, is it possible for him to find or acquire a loophole that lets him run for President another 2 times?

Hey, it worked for Richard Nixon's head. You never know!

In the meantime, the States are now proclaiming: "Welcome to Bush Country!" And obvious, as this CNN article tells us, everyone is pushing and shoving each other to get in!

OTTAWA, Canada (Reuters) -- Disgruntled Democrats seeking a safe Canadian haven after U.S. President George W. Bush won Tuesday's election should not pack their bags just yet.

Canadian officials made clear on Wednesday that any U.S. citizens so fed up with Bush that they want to make a fresh start up north would have to stand in line like any other would-be immigrants -- a wait that can take up to a year.

"Let me tell you -- if they're hard-working honest people, there's a process, and let them apply," Immigration Minister Judy Sgro told Reuters.

Asked whether American applicants would get special treatment, she replied: "No, they'll join the crowd like all the other people who want to come to Canada."

There are anywhere from 600,000 to a million Americans living in Canada, which leans more to the left than the United States and has traditionally favored the Democrats over the Republicans.

But statistics show a gradual decline in U.S. citizens coming to work and live in Canada, which has an ailing health care system and relatively high levels of personal taxation.

Government officials, real estate brokers and Democrat activists said that while some Americans might talk about moving to Canada rather than living with a new Bush administration, they did not expect a mass influx.

"It's one thing to say 'I'm leaving for Canada' and quite another to actually find a job here and wonder about where you're going to live and where the children are going to go to school," said one official.

Roger King of the Toronto-based Democrats Abroad group said he had heard nothing about a possible exodus of party members.

"I imagine most committed Democrats will want to stay in the United States and continue being politically active there," he said.

Americans seeking to immigrate can apply to become permanent citizens of Canada, a process that often takes a year. Becoming a full citizen takes a further three years.

The other main way to move north on a long-term basis is to find a job, which in all cases requires a work permit. This takes from four to six months to come through.

Statistics show the number of U.S. workers entering Canada dropped to 15,789 in 2002 from 21,627 in 2000. In 1981 some 10,030 Americans gained permanent residency, compared to 5,541 in 2003.

Asked if there had been signs of increased U.S. interest, Sgro said: "Not yet, but we'll see tomorrow."

The Canadian foreign ministry said there had been no increase in hits on the Washington embassy's immigration Web site, while housing brokers doubted they would see a surge in U.S. business.

"Canada's always open and welcoming to Americans who want to relocate here, but we don't think it would be a trend or movement," said Gino Romanese of Royal Lepage Residential Real Estate Services.

Those wishing to move to Canada could always take a risk and claim refugee status -- the path chosen earlier this year by two U.S. deserters who opposed the Iraq war.

"Anybody who enters Canada who claims refugee status will be provided with a work permit...it doesn't matter what country they're from," said an immigration ministry spokeswoman.

Refugee cases are handled by special boards, which can take months to decide whether to admit applicants. The rulings can be appealed and opposition politicians complain some people ordered deported have been in Canada for 10 years or more.

Today's Ironic Question: now that Kerry has conceded and given Bush the victory in the election, what might the first words out of Kerry's mouth be should he discover that, amazingly, he actually won the election? And would they have to be censored?


posted by Phillip at 6:57 PM

 

The location of our kiosk being in a mall, we see all sorts of kids and teenagers every day. Sometimes we see more of them than we'd like, courtesy of those half-days for high school. But then again, there are occasions where their presence makes life a little more interesting on days when I'm almost discovering that it is in fact possible to die from boredom.

A day or two ago, a 13 year-old boy was walking by our kiosk, his close group of friends with him, when suddenly he spotted one of our suede hats. With all the excitement of a rabbit discovering how delicious the taste of human flesh is for the first time (thanks again, Baboo, you carnivorous little bugger!), the 13 year-old had to stop and try the hat on. He then turned around to his friends and showed off how he looked with the hat, all the while exclaiming how cool it was.

I had not the heart to tell him it was a ladies hat he had on.

In other news, just when I think the people at our Head Office responsible for buying new styles of luggage couldn't be on any more crack, what to my disbelieving eyes should appear? Is it a tie-dye shirt? Is it a lava lamp? Is it a paisley shirt that's become radioactive? No, it's the latest piece of luggage, direct from the makers of "I Can't Believe It's Not Pastel-Coloured!"

If you can picture a carry-on suitcase that looks like all three of these aforementioned things horribly spliced together, and then electrified to a brighteness of ridiculously-neon proportions, then you will no doubt nod your heads and agree with me that those wacky buyers at Head Office have found a new kind of crack to enjoy at the water cooler.

There are times where I wonder if having a fashion sense means you've lost any sense of taste. Or decency...

Today's Paranoia Propaganda: if zombie movies have taught us one thing, it's that no good comes of resurrecting dead things. When will people learn that bringing back the 70's may spell disaster for us all?


posted by Phillip at 5:55 PM