Destined to become an Elgin Street Irregular...

Overheard while passing a small group of slacker stoners in the Superstore snack aisle, late one Friday night:

"...Well, yeah, I'm okay with two-for-one chip coupons, but three bags for the price of one?

"That's too much of a commitment..."

Down to...

This morning, the ol' inbox washed up a veritable tsunami of friends, well wishers and ummm, others, pointedly informing me of the Petfinder's latest screed about the Zero Means Zero blog

I have no idea why...

Zero Means Zero is apparently written by an administration insider, and as such has been a thorn in Mayor Larry's side almost since the moment he strutted into City Hall. It's scathing, mean-spirited and entertaining. It's been a bit tiresome recently, but still packs a nifty assortment of pointed words. And it has often publicly asked the questions that some of us were thinking privately. That it has also (somehow) remained anonymous all of this time seems to piss off the Larry partisans all the more.

I realize I may attract all manner of hurled debris toward Casa Coyote's infamously glassy walls when I ask this, but... the person(s) responsible for sending the lawyers after Zero by trying to force Google to reveal (his/her/its/their) identity? You noticed that they wanna be anonymous, right?

Oh, the irony. Or, ummm, possibly the paradox. Maybe the sarcasm. Er, the satire...? The oxymoron...? Crap! I dunno! Much like Alanis Morissette, we coyotes are frequently iffy on literary nuances. But doesn't it seem kinda goofy...?

Driver, follow that canoe!

It's time for some fresh ideas to make Ottawa the great city it can be but rarely is. The Research Director and Painted Stick came up with two molto buono proposals the other night. I just sat, listened and announced I would steal them for the blog.

Here is the first, courtesy of P.S.: A water taxi on the Rideau Canal. Other cities we love -- Chicago and Venice, to name just two, have 'em. Why not Ottawa?

All those folks who skate downtown to work from the Glebe during the six weeks the canal is actually frozen would no doubt enjoy taking the O-town vaporetto down our Unesco-worthy waterway the rest of the year. It could stop at all the little skateway entry points. We could even have "articulated" water taxis to negotiate those curves and make OCTranspo passengers feel at home.

Thoughts?

Stuck Inside of Riverside With the Richmond Blues Again

It's coyote season again!

Local media have returned to the evergreen story of coyotes (gasp!) eating cats in the 'burbs, and of death squads hunting us down. The only new twist is that the killers are trying to appropriate the touchy-feely language of psychobabble to explain how they 'manage' coyote/human interactions by 'establishing boundaries'.

I guess maybe guys who murder stuff for a living have a lot of trouble with their karma. And, this being Ottawa, they've decided to try to re-spin the cosmos.

The one on CBC Radio One's Ottawa Morning positively squirmed when Kathleen Petty cornered him into admitting out loud that 'managing' pretty much means 'killing'. He drove the semantic bus straight back to 'management' as quickly as he could, but you could practically hear Kate's eyes roll when he did.

I still find it fascinating how many urbanites want houses with all the perks of country living, as long as they don't have to, you know, deal with the actual messy ruralness of it all...

So I just wanna say, in coyotes' defence, that these suburban excursions ain't exactly our fault. You saw this morning's news story about car companies falling over themselves to licence Bob Dylan's voice for their in-car GPS systems? They didn't make it out to be a done deal, but since Bob is the Head Coyote, I'm pretty sure that our contractual confidentiality agreements can be loosened to let you know that we coyotes have already been beta-testing it.

So those coyote encounters? It ain't us, babe. The test version, like Bob, has, ummm, mumbly moods. Any coyote that has not ingested massive quantities of hallucinogens at some recent point in their life has got no hope in hell of translating the incomprehensible blithering.

Hey. That incomprehensible blithering is why he's our oracular spiritual leader in the first place...

But we, like, you know, end up lost in places we shouldn't be, starving and eating cats to survive. As you may imagine, our karma suffers terribly from this. However, I'm sure they'll fix it in the production models...

Together at Last

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(OTTAWA - Aug. 21) Ottawan’s have waited for this moment. And now it’s here. Two musical greats bring down the house in this once-in-a-lifetime concert event.

On Saturday night at Britannia Park, on one stage, at one time.

Bruce and Britney: Together at last.

Hear some great collaborative songs:

Hit Me Baby One More Time (and I will go to the Woman’s shelter)

If You Had a Rocket Launcher In Your Pants

Toxic (Chemicals that is)

I’m a Slave 4 U and Your Fascist Architecture

Rumours of Glory Booty

It’ll be social justice-alicious.

-30-

We Love Zoom, or The Canadian Culture, Eh! Game

Zoom, you've been concerned that Canadians have no culture. You have also mentioned in the past that you love playing games. So, today I took the photo above for you, so that you can play at spotting the five things that are part of our Canadian Culture in the picture (click on it to enlarge).

Have fun! And, yes you will get a prize out of this.*

*Contest only open to those named Zoom who own a blog named Knitnut.

Dirty. Secrets. Buzz. Shower not included.

We ESIs have a recurring conversation along the lines of: Are we simply shameless? Or are we desperately shameless?

With that in mind, a new book caught my roving eye: Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz by David Seaman.

Now here's an author who walks, er, rather, runs, the talk. Scribe Seaman promises in a press release to jog around New York's Times Square naked if his book doesn't crack the Amazon.com Top 100 within three days. That takes cajones, or at least the willingness to flap them in the Big Apple breeze for all to see.

"With the recession as it is, sometimes an author has to put everything on the line to get attention for a worthwhile and exciting read," Seaman says. "Book sales are down at an apocalyptic rate for most authors due to the downturn, and I'm willing to take a risk here . . . This book is worth my reputation, and possibly a couple nights in prison."

The tome is billed as "the definitive guide to guerrilla fame and cutthroat viral marketing."

And the ESIs should leap on Seaman's advice like Jack Layton pouncing on a can of mustache wax.

A few choice chapter subtitles:

* Celebrity Tabloids: Getting in them or staying out of them
* Enemies are more important than friends
* Be Outrageous or Die!
* Google juice: hot links from highly rated sites
* TV doesn't make you - you make you
* Get ten thousand visitors for free through StumbleUpon
* Overcoming publicity post-partum depression: Knowing when and where to find the next hook

Having said all this, I'm not sure Ottawa is ready for the ESIs parading their individual wares down Elgin Street if we fail to win a CanBlog Award. (With the possible exception of Coyote, who never wears pants.)

Tracking the mint's missing gold

I happened by Mister Sloppy's place yesterday - okay, he happens to have air conditioning - and by way of breaking his grumpy Evil-Genius silence, mentioned the Mint's vanishing gold problem, and how the local Petfinder was just yesterday obsessing again about the strange silence of government, mint and red coated gendarme types.

Mister Sloppy snickered. My usually cast-iron coyote tummy clenched. That laugh is never good.

"Slop," I said, fearing the worst. "In your obsessive quest for world domination, you haven't sucked 15 million bucks' worth of gold into an improbability vortex? Or something?"

"I didn't need to," he cackled.

"Huh?" I can be a dimwitted doggy. Especially when it helps me enjoy nice cold air conditioning a bit longer.

"You know how the Tories - having such terrific heads for business - are all hot on selling off prime government assets at fire sale prices? To allegedly balance the government's books, even though it always loses major money?

"I was rummaging around a government network one night a coupla years back and sniffed out the fact that their brain trust had decided to flog the mint's extra gold inventory in secret. To - get this - one of those "We buy all of your used gold - no amount too large or too small" joints that advertise on late night cable channels. I hacked myself into a few emails as a discussion option, and incorporated myself as a cheap gold buyer the next day. Bought a few ads in throw-away tabloids and on cable to look legit. Hung out. Waited. The government showed up in no time!"

"Aaand?" I breathed.

"I drew up a contract they couldn't make head or tails of. Not that they ever make head or tails of anything," he snorted. "When the dust cleared, I had signatures on an airtight document assigning me fifteen million bucks in gold ingots and assorted refining scrap, purchased for the princely sum of thirty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents. Which, by the way, is actually about what most old gold places would have paid 'em. A buncha the backroom guys from the PMO are now so redfaced, all they wanna do is drop the whole story down a mine in Sudbury."

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta pack." Mister Sloppy looked dreamy. "Maybe Switzerland. The ice cream in Zurich is fabulous this time of year."

"So you're taking a well-deserved break from planning world domination?" I said, hopefully. I've had enough Pepto-Bismol moments lately already, with Mayor Larry back.

Mister Sloppy cast an austere blue eye at me. "Of course not! The Large Hadron Collider is there, too..."

Figure Us Out: The Google Poem

* By some really weird coincidence, the police managed to figure us out by the next morning, but I think it was for the better. ...

* hang out awhile, and if you can't figure us out by then, you are hopeless!

* They are trying to figure us out by searching for us online, but all they have to really do is stop, listen, and absorb. We tend to glow

* It didn't take long for the man to figure us out. By noon, we were shown the door

* figure us out. By honoring ourselves, and living by this example, we allow others to do the same in their lives.

* ... Brett is trying to figure us out by gathering social data

* If you can't figure us out by our name you'll be too slow to keep up with our discussions of the world's ultimate racing series. ...

* you think people would figure us out by now :) ...

* Sheesh, you would think you could figure us out by now.

* If aliens from outer space were trying to figure us out by tapping into television transmissions, I wonder what they'd think.

* The teams will figure us out by the second half of the season

* Also, quit trying to figure us out by making lame generalizations, just talk to us instead.

* Like bears or any animals for that matter aren't smart enough to figure us out by now!!!!

* Maybe one day, you'll figure us out. By your statements, you clearly haven't as of yet.

* This is a good place to "figure us out" by direct observation.

[Search] [We're #9]

Tinfoil hats: a gut wrenching exposé

As avid, nay, militant exponents and proponents of tinfoil hats, especially in dire emergencies, we Irregulars have just gotten extremely distressing news:

Namely, that a buncha bright engineers from M.I.T. seem to have discovered that tinfoil hats do not protect your brain from zombifying, soul-sucking government and/or alien mind-control radio frequencies, but instead amplify them! (See the terrifying conclusion.)

Wait! This means that all this time when we thought we were laughin', and thought you were too - because you put on your tinfoil hat when we told you to, right? - all of us were actually under the influence of sub rosa mind-control rays, making us beleive things that were untrue. Evilly fostering, for instance, the illusion that our tinfoil hats were protecting us. And under that illusion, we were actually.... oh. Oh. Dear, dear me!

The very insidiousness of it all boggles one's (controlled) mind! Especially if one trusts engineers!

That we're all doomed over here, goes without saying . But hey. If we all just put on our soothing, comfy tinfoil hats, we'll never notice...

Summertime's small pleasures

Drippy weather didn't stop Cedric from enjoying a week at a cottage in the idyllic Gatineaus. He even made a new friend who calls himself the head gaffer and drinks a lot of herbal tea. I'm glad the little troll is having a good summer, but I'm not crazy about him hanging around Hollywood film-biz types.

Don't Tell Me It's a Google Poem

* Don’t tell me it's impossible

* Don’t tell me you're leaving.

* Don’t tell me if I'm dying cause I don't want to know

* Don’t tell me that that is the past and none of our concern.

* And don't tell me I don't have a right to my views on morality, while trying to force me to accept yours.

* Don’t tell me what you're against; tell me what you're for.

* Don’t Tell Me To Shut Up

* Don’t Tell Me SHOW ME

* And speaking of wait times, please don't tell me you're naive enough to think that isn't a problem in the US too?

* Don’t tell me what to think!

* Please don't tell me to rest.

* Don’t tell me what to do.

* Don’t tell me who it is! You'll ruin the fun…

* Don’t tell me what to write.

* Please don't tell me times are different and kids have it harder or more to carry now.

* Don’t tell me, I want to guess.

* Don’t tell me u can't, cos u will be a loser if u really can't.....

* Don’t tell me You can't turn around.

* Don't tell me how to drink your beer ...

* Don’t tell me you don't like it, write a letter to corporate.

* Don’t tell me not to fly, I've simply got to.

[Source]

Going Down is Going Up

On July 29, the Ottawa Citizen reported that a shocked couple complained about three books they discovered on the Ottawa Public Libraries "on order" list. [Citizen Article]

It's not clear who the couple are nor whether they wanted their complaint to be publicized.

This means it is an open question: Are they misguided prudes who don't realize that calls for censorship increase readership and that librarians are freedom-of-speech, anti-book-banning zealots who will hear their complaint as a reason to order even more sex manuals? Or is this couple a pair of devious sex manual publicists?

Whoever they are, I hope they complain about my book when I finally get around to writing it. Even if they don't, I'm grateful to them for making me realize I need to drop my working title: the meaningful little book of life with Jesus.

Get out your library card and click these links to get on the reservation list:

• The Going Down Guide
• The Sex Instruction Manual : Essential Information and Techniques for Optimum Performance
• The anal sex positions guide : the best positions for easy, exciting, mind-blowing pleasure
• The little book on meaning : why we crave it, how we create it
• A Meaningful Life
• A spectator's guide to Jesus : an introduction to the man from Nazareth

Hello Dolly

I wish that I had bought this doll that Gabe, over at Fish on Fridays, made and was selling at Urban Art in Minto Park on July 18th.

It would have made a great pincushion.

Judge: O'Brien Not Guilty

Us: Still Not a Good Mayor, Either...

The mayor of Ottawa remains in office, this morning found not guilty of influence peddling.

I admit that I would not have looked a gift verdict in the mouth, if the guy had happened to go down on this. But the trial has always been little more than a sideshow in the three-ring circus that is Larry O'Brien's mayoralty.

His Nibs seems to view leading a city of a million-plus as an ideal entry-level training position. You know, the kind most businesses give to summer students.

I probably do a disservice to students working their first summer jobs when I say this, but the mayor has, for the past three years or so, been remarkably similar to the overconfident, underprepared greenies who overestimate their clout, intelligence and value to the organization because they lack smarts to see how truly dreadful they are. Except that he, unlike most of them, does not seem to be learning from experience. Although, fueled by near-pathological hubris, he persists in thinking he has.

He's always made the mistake of thinking that private-sector thinking will solve the city's problems. News Flash: the public sector is here to do the important things that the private sector cannot or will not touch. The common good is often unprofitable as hell. There's a reason why the public and private sectors are separated. They're different.

What concerns me most now is that the man will mistake the verdict as complete vindication of his worth as mayor, and carry out his threat to run again in 2010. If the election turns out the same clueless types that gullibly swallowed his uninformed campaign promises the last time around, we're in trouble.

Ottawa would have its very own long-running Lastmanesque burlesque. The mind reels.