Date registered: January 6, 2016
Jan 01
George W. Bush is no longer the only nut on the planet with a nuclear bomb. Him Dim (or possibly mentally) Ill Jung, explodes North Korea’s first nuclear bomb. Meanwhile amullah guy in Iran, Mahmood (swings when) Ahmadinenejad continues to strive toward the completion of one of his own. In an attempt to distance himself from these lunatics, Mars the God of War introduces “Nut Free” Mars bars just in time for Halloween.
Jan 01
Pa forgot more than he remembered over the course of the year, but he will never forget destroying his calf in a tennis match with Thing 1.
Ma will remember 2006 as the year her dad followed in her footsteps with a belly operation.
Thing 1 cannot recollect any overly memorable good or bad experiences over the past year (possibly because be can’t differentiate reality from Game Cubedumb. His news story of the year was one that reported Japanese fishermen who landed a living fossil thought to be extinct until now (sounds hard to swallow even for a culture that eats raw fish). Favorite Television Show: One Piece. Favorite Movie: Tossup between Eragon and Happy Feet
Thing 2 tells me that his most memorable moment from 2006 was the opening light show at the IMAX cinema before “Night at the Museum”. Must have been something given it was also the year he witnessed the Cirque du Soleil, spent a week at a cottage on Sand Lake, joined cubs, buried his pet hamster Gohan, and discovered America’s Funniest Home Video’s and Malcolm in the Middle. Favorite Show: Zatch Bell. Favorite Music: Crazy Frog
Jan 01
The world is stunned when Canada sentences 17 young misunderstood “startlelists” to its harshest penalty under law – they are to be hung on a “Holiday Tree” until they are happy.
The Americans add the Canadian Bar Association (that’s the lawyers for you guys who drink too much to make the connection) to its list of terrorist organizations. The bar association claims that it is “innocent” and asks the Canadian taxpayers to foot the bill to prove this before settling out of court with the promise that they will get out of the business of defending “startlelists” on the taxpayers dime as soon as the expected glut of same sex divorces kicks in to quaff their “excess” capacity.
Amnesty International charges Canada with human rights violations and torture when they learn that young Canadian Wahhabis wannabes of the explosive variety are being subjected to a steady diet of old Roadrunner vs. Coyote cartoons in a sadistic attempt to scare them straight with graphic depictions of the consequences of playing with explosives and/or to develop their senses of humor.
Lebanon becomes the Canada’s 11th province. PEI is outraged that they will no longer be Canada’s premier destination for the majority of Canadians seeking a summer hot spot.
Canada replaces its long lost title as the Poster Peace Keeper for the Free World with a shiny new internationally recognized and undisputed reputation for being the World’s First and Only Free Travel Insurance Company.
The Canadian Government evacuates 200,000 nude Canadian snowbirds from Florida when an unusual absence of snow and clouds in December leads to a rash of sunburn and heat exhaustion that cannot be treated in the States using Canadian Medicare health insurance. With no ships in the area that can react at light speed as is every Canadian citizen’s right to expect, the Princess Cruise Lines are chartered to whisk the poor wretches back to Canada by way of the Suez Canal and Fiji.
The Princess Cruise lines are written into the Canadian Charter of Rights as the Charter of choice for all future evacuations of Canadian citizens living outside of Canada.
After two years of token gains in the weight loss column, yours truly explodes from the closet in a bid to fashion a new career as the next great Spanish super model.
In a related prediction, body wax and depilatory cream futures rocket to all time highs.
In a last ditch attempt to save western civilization from itself, all North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members outlaw hyphenation. It is now illegal for anyone to hyphen off the American (or any other) dream by way of radical hyphenation (e.g. Muslim-American, Lebanese-Canadian, Roman-Catholic, etc…)
The FBI is charged with kidnapping under a class action lawsuit from movie watchers everywhere on the grounds that they have stolen as much as 2 days of the average viewers time over the course of any given year as they find themselves locked into the FBI warning screens of their rented and/or purchased DVD’s without the right to a speedy fast forward.
Finally, parents and student violence are no longer the leading cause of job related stress in Canadian schools. A record number of teachers indicate their leading cause for being a little “spaced out” can be attributed to planets that have become planetoids and provinces that have becomes nationoids. A spokesperson complains there is just not enough time in the day to keep up with these changes which include what appear to be optionally random changes in time zones all over North America.
Jan 01
I won’t forget … to look after myself. Doctor, Dentist, Optometrist and Feet – oh, especially the feet and then, by God, I will get back to an exercise regimen that will resurrect my god-like physique – or at least trade my gaudy Buddha body for something a little more Greek goddy.
Ma will resolve to let the kids do their own homework.
Thing 1 resolves to do more sit-ups than I can and, weather permitting, spend a minimum of 40 minutes per day playing alone or together with his brother in the Great Outdoors or else spend the day alone in his room without electricity, batteries or any of his other social demons.
Thing 2 will stop getting upset every-time games don’t go his way. He will lose the privilege of playing any games for 1 day when he storms away without finishing, or 2 days when be throws all or part of said game to prevent others from finishing without him.
Jan 01
I am told our kitchen will be gutted and professionally remodeled by a very expensive architect specially trained in the arts of Zen and listening to Sylvie’s advice.
Jan 01
| Vital Statistics | 2006 | 2005 |
| a Canadian dollar is worth | $ 0.86 US | $ 0.86 US |
| a domestic postage stamp costs | $ 0.51 | $ 0.50 |
| a liter of Pepsi costs | $ 1.79 | $ 1.79 |
| a liter of water costs | $ 1.39 | $ 1.52 |
| a liter of milk costs | $ 1.25 | $ 1.00 |
| a liter of gasoline costs | $ 0.87 | $ 0.85 |
| a loaf of bread costs | $ 2.29 | $ 1.99 |
| a paperback novel costs | $11.99 | $10.99 |
| a weekly (Time) magazine costs | $ 5.95 | $ 4.95 |
| a comic book costs | $ 3.99 | $ 3.99 |
| a daily newspaper costs | $ 0.93 | $ 0.93 |
| a collectable card (Yu-Gi-Oh!) pkg. costs | $ 4.99 | $ 4.99 |
| a regular bus ride costs | $ 1.90 | $ 1.80 |
| a medium cup of coffee costs | $ 1.17 | $ 1.14 |
| a basic cable television package | $25.99 | $28.74 |
| a first run movie rental costs | $ 5.39 | $ 5.20 |
| an adult movie theatre ticket costs | $ 9.95 | $ 9.95 |
| a children’s movie theatre ticket costs | $ 7.95 | $ 7.95 |
| a babysitter (for Things 1 & 2) costs | $ 8.00/hr | $ 7.00/hr |
| a boy’s haircut | $ 9.95 | $ 9.50 |
| a adult man’s haircut | $12.95 | |
| a medium combination pizza | $16.35 | $15.70 |
| a new home computer (3.4GHz/160 GByte hard drive/) | $1387.00 | $1499.00 |
Jan 01
So there you have it. Eat (if itain’t tainted), Drink (but not so much that you need a Tylenol the following day), and be Merry (but not within earshot of a Muslim – or any other religious fundamentalist).
Jan 01
The Chinese called it the Year of the Rooster. The United Nations dubbed 2005 the International Year of Sport and Physical Education as well as the International Year of Micro-credit (small loans designed to tap entrepreneurial spirit existing in communities around the world). 2005 also marked the 100th anniversary of:
Primed as I am on champagne and beer, Alberta thousand dollars in Las Vegas there’s Norway I’ll be able to tie all these milestones into one of my cohesive, albeit rambling openers. Novacaine, not even Einstein when he’sinn féin form and snorting a factory full of airplane glue. U-boat to hear me try though, even if it stinks like the time I roald amundsen elephant crap after the circus left town – but first I need to go get another beer. Ok lahoma gonna take it from here now (did I mention I’m black from the fridge). I’m cool now. Cooler than a popsicle in a hip joint, yet I find I’mata hari point in my train of thought, and with fewer active brain cells than a bowl of puffed rice I might just as well call it quits now and go to bed. Speaking of snowballs and hell, Jules Verne there if you don’t close your eyes when you come to the things that I expect to be writing about the various religious orders of record. Oops! Lookout, tower’s getting late and here I’m still rambling on like an outboard motor mouth. Better get down to business now. Saskatchewan the flip side.
Jan 01
“When Mother Nature’s Water Breaks…its Water, Water, Everywhere.”
Water and China were popping up everywhere in the news of 2005. Heck China even ended the year by accidentally spilling Benzine into one of their major river systems and then six weeks later cadmium into another. Add that to the constant flow of western jobs to Chinese sweatshops and the flood of Chinese goods onto the global market and I guess I’ll compromise and call 2005 the International Year of the Flood. The year opened with the aftermath of the Great Southeast Asian Tsunami, the skies opened in what would be the worst Hurricane season on record and the New Orleans dikes opened to flood the Big Easy. Alberta and Manitoba experienced serious flooding, Central Europe spent several weeks underwater, a northern Ontario Indian village was airlifted from their tainted drinking water and my basement flooded again. Meanwhile in Niger an estimated 2.5 million could die as a result of famine brought on by a lack of water.
In a related (emerging) story: We got water and everyone wants it. The following is an excerpt from a Nov. 24, 2005 MacLean’s magazine article entitled, “America is Thirsty “:
“…When the U.S. government surveyed the 50 states in 2003, more than two-thirds said they expect to face some sort of water shortage within the next 10 years. The situation is even worse in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world population, or almost 5.5 billion people, will face chronic water shortages, and scientists expect global warming will only make things worse.
In this context, Canada is a country of unbelievable water wealth. This country boasts more than 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, and the flow of rain, spring water and snowmelt that courses through our waterways represents seven per cent of the planet’s renewable water supply — all to satisfy the needs of just 0.5 per cent of the world’s population.
But as the global water crisis deepens over the next two decades, this country’s intransigence will prove increasingly difficult to maintain. Canada is offside even the UN’s position on the matter. In 1997, the UN said that international water markets and trade are likely the only way to alleviate chronic shortages worldwide, while discouraging water waste in areas where it’s plentiful. But it’s not just a humanitarian issue: there is an enormous commercial opportunity and economic imperative at stake. If Canada insists on opting out of international water trade, that decision will almost surely do severe damage to the country’s economy and standard of living.
Dr. Isabel Al-Assar, an international trade expert based at the University of Dundee, Scotland said, “Water will become like oil one day, I have no doubt about it.” If Al-Assar is right, then Canada, through a miraculous stroke of lucky geography, is sitting on a liquid gold mine. Pinpointing exactly how much Canada could reap by selling fresh water depends heavily on a long list of questions: what price would buyers be willing to pay? How would it be transported? How much could be safely withdrawn without damaging sensitive ecosystems? But in 2001, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Winnipeg-based think tank, constructed a theoretical business model showing that if Manitoba could sell 1.3 trillion gallons of water per year (roughly the amount that drains from provincial rivers into Hudson Bay in only 17 hours) at the same price charged for desalinated sea water in California, the province could reap annual profits of close to $4 billion. In 1992, the World Bank estimated that worldwide trade in water could be worth US$1 trillion within the next generation. Even the opponents of water trade acknowledge that much of that market could belong to Canada.”
Jan 01
“T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring…” but wait a minute what’s that? Light Emitting Diodes you say! Kyoto your bed and spring to window, this may just be another savior born of Christmas. Could LED lighting be the answer to all of our energy woes? Well if half of what I am hearing is partly true it just might be.
Lighting accounts for twenty percent of all energy use in the US. All this light, however, comes at a cost; producing the electricity creates pollution from power plants and greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing energy needs from lighting even just by half could save billions of dollars and help wean us off our dependence on oil. Many now see light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, as the potential solution to the problem. Our current system of light is tremendously inefficient; incandescent bulbs waste 95 percent of the energy flowing through them as heat. Fluorescent bulbs are more efficient, but their harsh color has prevented them from fully penetrating the lighting market. LEDs are long-lasting, extremely rugged – one scientist tells a tale of dropping one from three stories and then plugging it into a socket – and promise to be ten times more energy efficient than current incandescent lights. In addition, they remain at room temperature, which can cut down energy use even further by reducing air-conditioning that today offsets heat from lights.
…excerpt from Living on Earth with Steve Curwood, a weekly environmental news and information program distributed by National Public Radio.