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.

Let the real games begin...

If you just immigrated from a cannibal galaxy to pose as an earthling, I'll give you a big hand and tell you that today marks the beginning of The Games That Must Not Be Named.©®™*

Only yesterday I was telling the Independent Observer how torn I felt. I can, and do, admire the single-minded focus and dedication of athletes that train for years to compete. And their overarching efforts in the sporting events themselves.

But the arguably corrupt organization of entitled minor ex-aristocrats behind them, and the overburden of corporate sponsors jostling to noodge as much reflected glory as possible away from these athletes? Not so much.

And the blank-eyed Prime Minister with the Fiberglas©®™ hair who plans a big post-prorogue poll bounce in the happily-ever-after of Canadian athletes (completely unconnected with himself) winning a buncha bent gold gongs, not at all.

So it is with a song on my lips and a smile in my heart that I open the ESI Olympic Non-Specific Scandal watch. Things are interesting already. We have the usual 30-odd garden-variety doping bans (not us, so far, eh?) meted out before that big flame even fired up. Performance-enhancing drugs are so 90s. Everybody does 'em. Can we just ignore that aspect and move on? Please? They're an inconvenient distraction. Not at all what we meant by Citius, Altius, Fortius. At least not originally...

But just out of the starting gate, we also have a wild Canadian accusation that the German luge team is using magnets in its sleds. Somehow.

Rapidly followed by official denials all 'round, from the Germans and the sport's international sanctioning body.

As a semimythical coyote of wily but small brain, I'm totally unclear on any, ummm, actual science-y thingies involved. So, apparently, were the accusers. But, hey, that didn't stop the story from bucketing out of the starting gate faster than sledders themselves.

There has been speculation in some parts that this is part of a psychological campaign to strike fear into the hearts of our sledding opposition and unbalance their sang-froid. Unfortunately, they ain't the ones lookin' unbalanced at the moment. Obviously, the PM excepted, Canadians are so amateur at this mind-game stuff. Must do better! Or as we coyotes always say, citius, altius, fortius...!

* Unless You're A Shill An Official Sponsor Whose International Corporation Has Paid A Whack Of Blackmail Money To The Private Club of Crepuscular Old Men Who Run The Franchise As A Personal Fiefdom

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...

Conspiracy or a Jeff Goldblum Flick?

The Facts:

Friday, July 24th -- 12:19 a.m.
Federal government announces that the Alexandra Bridge over the Ottawa River will be closed to all traffic for supposed repair work between 9 pm and 6 am, starting Sunday evening through to Thursday, July 30th

Friday, July 24th -- 12:33 a.m.
Only 14 minutes after the previous announcement, Public Works adds a second bridge to the list of closures. This time it's the Macdonald-Cartier bridge that will be closed to cyclists and pedestrians heading north starting the morning of Tuesday, July 28th at 9 am.

Friday, July 24th -- Late afternoon
West Ottawa experiences a flood that some describe as a "one-hundred year" event.

Monday, July 27th -- 2:55 pm
Ottawa Police issue a press release requesting the public's assistance in identifying two female suspects involved in a robbery of an Ottawa taxi driver. Both young co-eds were unarmed and were not too uneasy on the eyes from what can be gained by the photos. The driver took them from the Byward Market (only a stones throw from either of the above bridges) and drove them to Baseline and Woodroffe where the robbery took place. The two were last seen traveling east on Baseline road.

Monday, July 27th -- ~ 9 pm.
Local media report that the verdict in Larry O'Brien trial to be delivered one-week sooner than planned.

Monday, July 27th -- 10 p.m.
Britannia residents report some suspicious activity involving lights and loud noises over the Deschenes rapids followed by what appears to be an aircraft crashing into the river. Ottawa Police take the reports seriously and issue its own press release at 3 a.m. in the morning the next day. Story is odd enough that Boing-Boing, the source of everything worth knowing, picks it up.

Tuesday, July 28th -- 11:15 am
Police report a kidnapping and theft of an LCBO tractor trailer near Walkley and Bank St. (best accessed via Baseline Rd. east to Heron and south on Bank St.). The incident happened shortly after midnight. The driver is eventually found almost 200 km. east of Ottawa in Vaudreuil, Quebec.

Tuesday, July 28th -- 4 pm
Police issue a press release claiming that the search of the Ottawa River has turned up nothing despite the observations of witnesses. They halt any further search.

Tuesday, July 28th -- 5:15 pm
Police issue a media release that they have completed a two-day prostitution and "John" sweep in Lowertown (not far from either bridges) and Vanier (east of Ottawa) and have made a few arrests. No names are released.

When AAs sag

No, no, not those AAs. What were you thinking?

We coyotes lead portable lives. And that means we carry much small, valuable electronic paraphernalia about our ummm, persons. Anti-mayor radar, that sorta thing. If you see a medium-sized 'was that a dog?' someplace weird downtown - and it clanks with hidden gear - that's me. Oops. I digress. Who'da thunk?

Anyway, based on an anecdotal sample of one, I've lately noticed a steep climb in instances where costly gizmos go wonky, and I open them up to floods of corrosive goo from burst AA cells. Which I must clean out, or lose the gadget. This almost never used to happen if one avoided off-brands and dodgy dollar store counterfeits. Lately it's been like, twice a week.

I'm sure our friend Milan has statistics somewhere on the environmental unfriendliness of alkaline cells versus rechargeable, with life-cycle assessments demonstrating that investing in new and rechargeable gizmos is better than pumping one-use alkalines into old stuff. He's all over that sort of thing.

My issue is that rechargeable AAs are often AAAs stuffed in bigger AA cases. They're weak, and wear down fast. Still-working, but power-mad older stuff is what I have, and I am loathe to replace it. Especially that anti-mayor radar. It saves my tail sometimes... Oop. Digression detector's beeping!

Ummm, I blame Wall-to-Wall-Mart. And globalization. Among others.

Wall-to-Wall is a retail gorilla that tempts potential suppliers with huge markets. Under contract, they start relying too heavily on that fat, high-volume, low-margin cash cow. Then Wall-to-Wall orders 'em to slash supply costs, so it can undersell Target or Sears. Suppliers have to cheapen themselves or die. Win for the consumer, right? Or maybe once-reputable brands fatally debase themselves on Wall-to-Wall's altar. And maybe Wall-to-Wall throws 'em away when they're so lousy nobody buys 'em anymore. It's bidness.

Something similar can happen when formerly home-grown businesses contract out to far eastern factories for hire. Factories low ball contract bids insanely, then do test runs to prove they can actually make a thing to a "carefully monitored" North American or European firm's specifications. Once they snag the contract, they squeeze already low-paid workers, and find all sorts of cheesy, sleazy ways to progressively save a few cents per unit here, a penny a unit there, until they get a profit. Who cares if there's lead in the toys or venetian blinds? Or carcinogens in the baby formula? Or that flimsy MP3 and DVD players fail in weeks? And batteries vomit? We're only really talkin' about makin' money here!

Which may be why I keep running old, still-serviceable, but power-hungry electronic thingies on alkaline AAs. Years later, they still work. They wear out, not break. Just as long as I can keep those cheap fucking batteries from screwing 'em up...

Thong Thursday

I was going to make Thursday, Thong Thursday. However, given the gravity of the current economic situation, I must shift my focus to non-arse matters. I'm ignoring the election here up north. Not because I think it's boring ( even though it is). But because the Harper majority possibility scares me into a blah-blah-blah-I'm-not-listening kind of state. So, let's shift the focus south. Not that it is less scarey.
McCain has suspended campaigning because......he thinks he can singlehandedly save the economy right before the election? Or, is it because (here's the conspiracy theory) Bush is planning to cancel the election because ......how can they have an election when the "entire economy is in danger"? And watch for another terrorist attack while you're at it.
Apart from all this, the weather has been nice, eh? Warm enough to wear a thong.