So, love...?

The Elgin Street Irregulars once had a thing or six to say about the psychology of relationships. It was a forte. We semimythical coyotes haven't gone there in quite awhile. Lately we've preferred a surreal playground of our own making.

But hey. It's the black depths of January and even my splendiferous new Coyotie Blankie is a few R-values short of adequate. As Winnipeggers say whenever the frost is this bitter: "Cold enough to freeze the balls off the Golden Boy." Ottawa, at this moment, is probably freezing the balls off the Famous Five...

I digress. How inappropriate. Probably brain-freeze.

Anyway, this weekend, with Valentine's Day on the horizon, and likely an election also, the PM, in an intimate heart-to-heart with about 600 hand-picked clapping seals party faithful, told the country that no one loves it more than his government. Well, except, maybe, him.

He loves the country so much, in fact, he can't bear to think of it going out with anyone else. He loves it so much, he wants a parliamentary majority so he can change it completely, to suit himself. I imagine that he believes with every fibre of his fibreglass hair that Canada would love him right back if only it would do exactly what he says.

Canada, can we talk? Now is a good time for you to checklist, honestly, how many of the warning signs of an emotionally abusive relationship the guy has displayed in the last five years. I'm just sayin'...

The worst part for the Stevester...

...about manipulating the country into another unwanted election, no matter how badly he wanted it, no matter how much he thought that maybe he could pull off a majority this time, was having to retool his usual, grim, authoritarian public persona.

He had to overcome deep personal distaste. To pretend to be warm and fuzzy, to con (heh...) the all-important female vote.

As Ottawa's chattering gaggles twittered themselves into a pre-electoral tizzy, Stevie-baby knew that the old quick fixes - like the much-lampooned blue sweater vest - were stale toast.

It'd have to be something bold enough to change minds without forcing him to change any of his deeply held, yet deeply unpopular, political stands. Yet something that spoke to his inner rockstar. So he hired rafts full of image consultants. Wrangled. Bit the bullet. Called in the fiberglas supplier that had done his hair for years. All the while, he feared that the gargantuan cost of retooling the factory dies completely would show him up as a hypocrite - or worse, a laughingstock - when the inevitable Access To Information Act requests uncovered it.

(Steverino's note to self: Kill that lousy act! Deader!)

Then, miraculously, the sales rep slyly suggested another fiberglas hair model already on the assembly line! It fit the bill perfectly...

Original photo: Remy Steinegger, Wikimedia Commons. You know where the hair came from...

Coffee with Mister Sloppy

When I dropped by Mister Sloppy's Centretown lair the other day to wish him a belated happy new year - or whatever passes for "happy" among elite-level evil geniuses - he was frenetically stuffing mailer boxes with gift coffee mugs. Given the guy's "It is Better to Swipe Outright than to Give or Receive" schema, it seemed out of character.

"No, no. Not really," he grinned, blue eyes bright with merriment and the usual insanity. "Didja read that news item the other day? The one about the transatlantic flight making an emergency landing because the pilot spilled coffee?"

Suddenly wary, I eyed the stacks of mugs sporting myriad famous high tech logos, and reached for the Rolaids. Sloppy was up to no good again.

"You, ummm, had something to do with that?" I asked.

"Not a thing! But it gave me a great idea! Every major lab in the world is fueled with caffeine. Heck, I've even been known to abuse the stuff slightly myself, on my own projects! So I just figured, you know, anonymously send all the researchers gift coffee cups with their company logos on 'em."

"Aaaaannnnddd?" I asked. When Mister Sloppy is happy, there's always an "Aaaaannnnddd?"

"Of course there is," he said impatiently, apparently reading my thoughts.

"Creepy," I thought. "I might need to check into that."

"No. You don't," Mister Sloppy said out loud. "It's a whole other thing. Nothing to do with this. Lookit, I'm proud of these. Every science guy in the world takes their coffee cup everywhere. These mugs are my new memory-enhanced nanoceramic. They're programmed at the atomic level to scan nearby computers or test equipment, then transmit a quantum-burst packet of all their data to my stealth server farm. Oh. Then they spill hot coffee on everything and short it out."

"So you're actually stealing...?"

"The sum total of the world's latest research. It's all good!

Maybe for evil geniuses. I declined a complimentary gift mug on the way out. And behind me, Mister Sloppy's laughter echoed like cats fighting in an alley...