Vegan Nightmare on Sparks Street

Yes, Ribfest, a.k.a. the best thing about Ottawa's so-called pedestrian mall, is back. And life is mouth-wateringly good.

Image: flickr.com

BREAKING NEWS

Coyote spotted driving in downtown Ottawa

At first he doesn't see me (what a big nose he has)

Suddenly his keen doggie senses kick in (what big eyes he has)

Then he sees me, and I run for my life (what big teeth he has)

Room service? Send up Cirque du Soleil!

Cedric may be small but he knows some big rollers. For instance,
Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the world's 20th-richest person and co-owner of the Fairmont Hotel chain.

Seems Cedric met the prince when they were fellow master's students at Syracuse University. The budding billionaire took a liking to the little guy, who picked up some extra cash by faithfully shining the royal Mercedes.

The prince never forgot, and presented Cedric with a Christmas gift: a cross-country tour of Fairmont digs that recently took us to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Cedric let me come along, but I drew the line at calling him Your Highness. After all, he's a dwarf.

Google Poem: Not me

* I'm not the kind of person who likes medications but with my migraines I've always taken a double dose of advil

* I'm not the kind of person to come up to a friend/colleague/family member and talk like there's no tomorrow. It's not me – at all.

* And I'm not the kind of idiot who will eat worms or a box of thumb tacks if you dared me.

* I'm not the kind of guy who says one thing today and another thing tomorrow

* I'm not the kind of liberal who thinks safety net programs are the end all be all, but I do think they serve a serious and necessary purpose.

* Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of cheesball man, comfortably satisfied by watching junk tv missing the fun like a spoil sport.

* I know I'm not the kind of girl vamps like to sink their teeth into.

* Normally I'm not the kind of guy who would go around encouraging people to look at my stuff

* I'm not the kind of person that instantly jumps on the "the world is gonna be nuked," "the Earth is heating up and New Jersey will be an underwater museum," bandwagon.

* Now granted, I'm not the kind of freak that needs the new and improved upgrade the day it's released,

* What should I do, I'm not the kind of person to be straightforward about these things.

* So, I'm not the kind of person who checks his email regularly, but this time I just had to, because my inbox has too many e-mails from Facebook.

* Andddd, yeah I'm not the kind of girl that ALWAYS have the perfect hair, perfect bangs, perfect face and everything.

* I'm not the kind of person who believes thieves ought to get off free.

* I'm not the kind of person who thinks there are certain things you just can not joke about.

* and I'm not the kind of person that thinks about taking pictures of clouds very often. In case you care.

* See...I'm not the kind of wife that can't sleep when her husband is not right next to her

* Because what I finally realized yesterday is that I'm not the kind of person who I used to be

* I'm not the kind of person who likes losing her time, but sometimes it feels good.

* I'm not the kind of artist who can paint the same kind of picture over and over, or write the same stuff over and over. I need to be on the move, exploring, failing, striving and challenging myself.

* I'm not the kind of guy who just sleeps with anyone

* I'm not the kind of person to not put in my two cents.

* I'm not the kind of girl to try to play a man out. I take the money and the gear and then break the hell out.

* And I'm not the kind of guy, I think you know, that spends a whole lot of time worrying these things.

[Source]

A carnival atmosphere

Y'know...

The thought of riffing just one more time on the weak-mindedness of politicians contributing to this town's carnival atmosphere makes me catastrophically weak in the knees. All four.

And after all, with the onset of full-on festival season in the Nation's Cap, the chimp house on the Hill becomes a mere second banana sideshow, albeit one with the undisputed entertainment value of high pitched screeching and gratuitously flung poo.

But this weekend, thank Dog, we can dive into two truly excellent little affairs that have nothing to do with politicians. Except for the inevitable drive-by glad handing, which Ottawattamies have learned to ignore with blasé shrugs and understated lip curls. Tsk. I digress.

In Centretown, Le Festival Franco-Ontarien has set up shop with a big main stage, a Ferris wheel 'n everythin', in front of City Hall. I'm pretty sure any politicians will mostly be safely locked inside. The musical line-up looks like good times.

And out in deepest Westboro is the free and extraordinarily kickass little WestFest. The musical line-up also looks like good times.

And if neither of those grab your butt, Zoom has a bunch more options posted. My best advice? Stock up on bus tickets, cab fare, or chain oil. Shuttle back and forth with un-Ottawa-like abandon! Fest early! Fest often! It's finally the season again for actual real people - and coyotes - in this burg...

Emergency Meeting Minutes: 2009-06-10

Venue: The Usual Spot

Present: Agatha, 4th Dwarf, Coyote, Woodsy, Independent Observer

Absent apparently w/o Regrets: Chair, Conch Shell

Brief discussion of who will take minutes. 4D grudgingly accepts duty even though he did it last time and Aggie uses a sarcastic tone when saying he always does a good job of the minutes.

1. Wither the Blog

A: We need a project.

C: Yeah, we're like the Blahhg

W: I find it works best when we're random

C: We had a purpose when we started.

W: Get over it.

A: We need a new mission and vision.

W: I don't want to be pigeon-holed "that's what we do"....The Bank Street Irr... what were they? Irrelevants? (yes) they saw us as adventurers.

A: We need to go out and get in trouble again.

W: We're supposed to be metabloggers.

C: What about Kady O'Malley or some other high-profile person?

A: Make it our mission to find a new blogger? What about getting her to an emergency meeting? We could try to get a high-profile person to:

• notice our blog
• read our blog
• comment on our blog

IO arrives, 4D reads out what has gone before.

W: We could post simplified postings of the high profile blogger's postings.

IO: Aren't we patronising enough already?

A: What is our forté?

IO: Random observations on Ottawa life...

Someone recalls that we had decided to do more field trips at a previous emergency meeting. Several venues that purvey alcoholic beverages are proposed. Members begin tossing out ideas:

A: Stalking

W: Random art - like those balloons

C: or El Maks

4D: Aggie, could you elaborate on "stalking"?

A: It's something we used to do a lot of...

C: Fieldwork.

4D: I used to do fieldwork.

C: Yeah. Like the first time you got hung out to dry.

[4D gets all wistful and there is a brief conversation about when exactly the dwarf was first hung out to dry.]

4D: You know a fieldwork posting that I wish we had done? When Zoom went to the open house in the building the mayor lives in.

The possibility of blogging unsubstantiated and unreported rumours about marital discord in the life of a prominent politician is raised.

4D: Suppose let's say one of us blogged this, let's say it was our old friend 6th Apostle, our 30 readers might be entertained. Then a month later, the wife files for divorce. Suddenly it's a big story. And someone notices that 6th Apostle had the scoop. Do you think there might be a lot of attention focussed on exactly who that blogger is? Would you want that attention, Coyote?

W: I want attention, but I want healthy attention. [Woodsy relates another blogger's experience of RCMP IP addresses showing up in her blog's statistics.]

A: We don't want the police after us.

4D: Should we run a story that main-stream media won't?

IO: The blog is not authoritative. It's just a bunch of people seeing things. It doesn't claim to be news.

W: Like when People Magazine has a psychiatrist talk about a celebrity and they say "this therapist is not treating"

IO: People Magazine is up here [he puts his hand up as high as it can go]. We're down here [he holds his hand about a foot above the floor.]

4D: So we should speculate on just what Harper was doing in that bathroom in Normandy?

IO: Exactly.

2. The Chair and Conch Shell

A: What shall we do about them?

W: We tried... We had the schedule.

A: Stroke their egos?

Not to provide a solution, but to provide a context for any possible solution, 4D pontificates on the complex psychology involving perfectionism and peer influence that works to prevent the Chair and Conch Shell from posting.

The possibility of tricking them into attending an emergency meeting is discussed along with other methods to bring about their attendance.

IO: You can shame someone to a meeting, but you can't make them blog.

W: Conchie is very busy.

A: We're all busy.

W: I would love regular summaries on celebrities from Conch Shell.

A: Do we want them back?

W: Yes. I like their stuff.

C: It helps to have a couple more view points.

4D writes "F--- them. I'm bitter" in his notebook and shows the others.

IO: Maybe we should metablog them.

A: How would we metablog them when they don't blog.

IO: Stalk them. We might scare them into blogging.

W: Now, now, nothing mean. Be nice.

IO: It can't be all carrot; there has to be stick.

3. Colours

Woodsy reminds us of the reason she called the meeting and asks for our colour choices.

IO: Blue

A: Speckled purple

C: tan and grey

4D: red and white just like my swim suit

4. Lunch with Woodsy

Woodsy mentions she will be having lunch with a prominent local blogger soon. 4D suggests she could blog it and make it a regular feature: Lunch with Woodsy. All agree that this would be excellent.

W: I could even have lunch with each of you and blog it.

4D: Be careful. You don't want to create an expectation that is unfulfilled. Like if someone said they were going to write profiles on all of us and then only did one.

W: Why? Did somebody do that? [4D, IO and C point at Aggie.]

A: I could still do that.

5. What About Bob?

It is noted that we are still waiting for Bob to decide what prize he wants because he asked for something that he already had. We decide to update the contest winners in the sidebar.

6. Back to the Chair and Conch Shell

A: What do we like that the Chair does?

• Love his graphs
• his Web cams
• He's the number-crunching guy
• He's come up with entire theories
• Political analysis
• Especially during elections
• He's the expert on fringe parties

A: And Conch Shell?

• Finger on pulse of pop culture
• Au courant
• Great at justifications for other people's bad behaviour
• Excellent advice

7. Merchandise

Aggie suggests we need merchandise. 4D points out that he sold 3 shirts.

Aggie looks at her watch and announces she needs to leave.

Meeting adjourned.

A cure to cry for

It is spring. Heck, it's almost summer. But it doesn't really feel like winter's truly over. Many people are still sick. Some are paranoid about getting swine flu.

The guy at the shawarma shop where I get my coffee has the cure.

"Eat an onion," he says. "Do not cook onion. Just eat the onion raw. Whole thing. Raw."

In addition to possibly curing your cold / flu / blahs, it will ensure you do not pick up any of these ailments from a person of the opposite sex.

We want you, Jasmine!

Dear Jasmine,

Sometimes this world can really make you feel like a loser. We know that over here at the ESI Academy. Now that you are jobless and injunctionless, we would like to welcome you into the ESI family. Since the Chair and Conch Shell stopped blogging, and I have had my own problems blogging, we have spaces available. You have all the qualities we need in an ESI blogger:

1) You are hot. We like that over here. Let's face it, hotness matters!
2) You lose shit. We just love your Attention to Deficitness.... In fact, it just makes you all the more attractive to us.
3) You record people without them knowing. We love that you recorded your boss being a complete cow. If more folks did this, it would be a better world. Jasmine, you rock! Imagine all the field work we could do with you! We'll get you a new recording device and you can get started right away.
4) You are well connected, apparently. We need all the social capital we can get over here. We need you, Jasmine. With you, we could win all those blog contests hands down.
5) You like cocktails and pizza. Guess what? We do, too!! .

Artsy Fartsy Loo

Bob, is this not the most beautiful loo you've ever seen?

I didn't know if I should pee or genuflect...

Screw it. I'm goin' surfin'

We have a mayor striving to make Mel Lastman look good. We have a former prime minister striving to make hisself look good - and good luck with that lost cause, Brian! And we have a current PM striving to make the same-old, same-old troughing, mendacity and general ass-covering evil look good. After he swore he was going to change all of that. The big, flashy promises are always easier in opposition, huh, Steve?

I have had my fill of these shmucks. I'm going surfin'. Got the board. Got the wax. Got the hibachi. Now. Where did I put the damn orange sauce...?

Root, root for the gnome team

Cedric attended the very first Cubs home opener at Chicago's Wrigley Field (then known as Weeghman Park) back in 1916.

After his favourite team lost the championship to the Boston Red Sox in 1918, the pint-sized fan vowed never to return to the ivy-covered shrine until the Cubs won the World Series.

But he couldn't wait forever. After all, the tiny guy's life expectancy is only another 126 years.

Cedric enjoyed his return to Wrigley on the weekend, watching his beloved Cubs down the L.A. Dodgers, nibbling on hotdogs and slurping a brew or two.

He's no slouch on the field, either. Cedric had the highest on-base percentage during his two seasons in the 1920s with Blue White Amsterdam of the Dutch Baseball Union. His secret? Pitchers walked him almost every time because his strike zone was -- and still is -- only one centimetre.