Darkly dreaming of dirty work at the crossroads

One niggling issue with buying a brain is that it is - so far, anyway - only an aftermarket accessory. I expect that will change at some point, but at the moment, Mayor Larry's attempt to bolt on some kinda political savvy is hampered by the fact that his actual, own brain is still the one hooked directly to his mouth. Mouth-shooting neurons being as speedy as they are, he can say all kindsa crap before the hired brain can, ummm, hit the Emergency Crash Override button.

So it was, with the Ottawa Stun's editorial board yesterday. Larry blurted that he had a hard time not thinking, as unnamed "more suspicious people" apparently already have, that former regional chairman Andy Haydon's entry into the mayoral race was engineered by front-runner Jim Watson to bleed off Larry fans and cause his ultimate mayoral demise.

Apparently, any unelection event would so not be Larry's fault. Also apparently, Larry fans, while ummm, legion, can't tell two bald guys apart. I'll take a moment to point out to fiscal conservative types who might be duped by such nefariosity that Haydon, while indeed partly bald, is an actual practicing fiscal conservative who knows how to do that kinda thing successfully. He is also capable of pithiness. Unlike me. I just digressed again.

Larry's campaign manager, Robert Thompson was in there yanking the leash. But it musta have been one of those spring-loaded thingies I see on all the posher domestic doggies: you know, the ones that can unreel to about 10 metres like taut clotheslines, to trip ya up. The leasher can theoretically thumb a brake button to shorten the line, and head off the leashee's intemperate darts into heavy traffic or other disasters - say, an unfortunate roll in something really smelly and unpleasant - but would have to be damnably quick on the draw* to slow down His Nibs.

So it was only after the blurtage that Thompson managed to yank that leash and tell Larry to STFU and get back onto the media line script. Carefully crafted by someone who's not Larry. A new, improved Larry 2.0 indeed. Two, ummm, too, bad about that legacy code...

* Mental digression: some freakishly-quick gamer with years of practice on X-Box or Playstation controllers might have developed the lightning reflexes needed. But I doubt they'd have the interest.