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...

Arms Free

There is driving hands-free, and then there is...

Send in the Clowns

Every time that I notice this mannequin, I am startled for a second.

But, despite her clownish hair and her maniacal smile, she has excellent fashion sense.

The poll bounce from his NAC gig seemed like a gift... *

...but the Tory brain trust quickly realized that keeping their robotic client's piano forte front and centre in voters' minds was going to be trickier than it had first seemed... **

* You didn't seriously think we were going to let this one go that easily. Did you?

** It did, however, have certain advantages over "Vote Harper And We'll Burn the Blue Sweater Vest" and "Vote Harper Or The Kitten Gets It".

No whore like an old whore *

For a guy hellbent on preserving, what he seems to believe is a, ummm, statesman's legacy and good name, former PM Brian Mulroney has quite an approach.

A brief pause to declare biases: my visceral hatred of the man and every oily thing he's done or stood for, has raged undying from the time he started smarming the backroom boys back in the antediluvian era, to this day. We keep punting the bastard out of the headlines. Still he has the nerve to keep coming back and re-offending, already! He once took voice coaching to lower his timbre and sound smoother. Still my large, sensitive ears must instinctively fold themselves shut periodically, to muffle an undertone of nails on a blackboard. Just so ya know.

My distaste stems from a sleazy style and an unidentifiable substance. I possess the clamouring sixth sense that every smirk - and he smirked a bunch, back in the day - signalled (yet another) gleeful skate to the thinnest edge of propriety. He was always more about clinching the deal - any deal - than what the hell actually came of it. Just as long as he could beat his chest in public and brag in private about being the smart guy that made it happen. And he seemed to truly love putting one over on just about anybody, then justifying it in technical terms so narrow and specious that only he and hangers-on seemed to be able to believe they were in the true spirit of the thing. It wasn't about the good of the country, or even his party, or the power. It was about putting one over on someone. Anyone.

You see where I'm going with this. Every time the guy did something, somebody got screwed. They knew they'd been screwed, and resented it. Their last sight usually was of Mulroney skating away on ice so thin it crackled, thumbing his nose over his shoulder. Eventually, most of the country felt that way. He skated off again, ducking humiliation by handing over the party to a Patsy (actually, a Kim...) so that he could say he'd always led the Tories to majorities. Technically.

Since, he has acted to save what he regards as his good name, in ways that beggar the idea of a good name. It's a world where being called Right Honourable is everything. Acting right honourably, not so much. This time he may succeed again - it's important for him to appear to be a success in others' eyes - but only in technical terms so narrow and specious as to hollow out the 'win' utterly. His performance at the inquiry on the Hill this week has been vintage: tightly scripted, smarmy, blustering, self-congratulatory, even crocodile tears. Along with gratuitous digressions that attempt yet again to rewrite history and re-shaft old enemies. Even now, he thinks he can charm the country one more time with sins of omission, half-truths and hubris. Possibly he will. Technically.

But it has been a performance. The guy wants to be liked and well thought of, and has no idea why so many hate him. Even as PM, he made a deeply flawed dramatic character: grandiose, venal, over-eager to be loved, fonder of appearances than actual substance. And pathetic. He still is. And he still deserves no sympathy.

* A curiously relevant Mulroney quote... don'cha think?

Buy Curious

It is not the first time, that I have been left confused rather than curious about a real estate ad.

5 questions popped into my head as I stared at this ad:

1. Is it a condo for the bi-curious?
2. Is it a condo for nudists?
3. Are those the real-estate agents or models?
4. Is the guy on the left looking down at the woman's coochie or at the guys schlong ?
5. Why isn't there a fifth (person)?

Mister Sloppy's hard drive hygiene hints

Of a recycling eve, I often meet a guy we'll call "Mister Sloppy", due to the perpetual cloud of kitty litter crumbs surrounding him. And because evil geniuses need snappy pseudonyms. And because he refuses to be called the traditional "Doctor Sloppy". Go figure.

Mister Sloppy often carries a computer or two rescued from recycling, because he's wiring together some kind of junkyard supercomputer with which to take over the world. The mounds of grubby beige boxes crammed into his place would confound Michael Dell. I avoid asking exactly what 'ol Slop plans, because the thought of any world run by him horrifies me. He, discretely, eschews details.

But he does tell what he sees on these castoffs when he fires 'em up to wipe off Windows and load his personal homemade Mister Sloppy World Domination Operating System (MS-WDOS). The latest find was exemplary: right on the desktop, two PDFs, each a filled-in loan application form. Birthday, income details, mother's maiden name -- bog-standard identity-theft stuff, really. Not very well hidden in the directories were about a quarter of a sizable hard-drive's worth of pirated MP3s, mostly bad thug rap and Britney's and Christina's (and Bananarama's) sappier stuff. Another quarter-drive was, ummm, educational literature and videos. Or possibly pornography. The rest comprised a truly astounding variety of worms, viruses, trojans, keyloggers, scamware, scumware, pestware and the like. Guess that's what ya get for piratin' dodgy MP3s and porn.

Oh, and a mess of Internet chat logs. Didja know MSN automatically archives a plain-text transcript of every personal text conversation for just any old evil genius to read? Not hard to find, either. The guy who owned this computer apparently had five or seven girlfriends on the hop, judging by the logs. And the photos. He left a startling number of JPEGs of himself, getting slitty-eyed drunk with buddies and appearing to behave somewhat better with young women. I say "appearing" because also in there was a 120-page PDF file disclosing full techniques for boffing one's companion for the evening on the first date, whether she wanted to or not.

Now, Mr. Sloppy has no interest in following any of this up for purposes of penny-ante evil. He has, ummm, far bigger fish to fry.

But I just have to give an advisory shout out to this guy (whom we'll call Pete): PETE! Although the personal information you left hangin' out in the digital wind ironically suggests that you work in a supervisory capacity in a security-related field, I do believe you're insecure (in many senses of the phrase). Don't you know that there's both information and all sorts of free program downloads on that same Internet you so enthusiastically trolled for movies of [redacted] sex and incredibly bad music? That, like, wipe files and hard drives in such a way that interested (or disinterested) snoopers can't read them? Mister Sloppy tells me they're easily available at download sites like this. And this.

Now, certain schools think industrial shredders, shotguns or explosives are the only certain ways to ensure that personal data on hard drives are erased beyond redemption. But I disapprove of firearms, and have better uses for explosives. So, Pete. Next time ya kick a computer to the curb, do yourself a favour, search out one more tiny little download from Bit Torrent, and cover your ass in all senses of the phrase. Because right now, Mr. Sloppy and I know way more about you than is good for any of us. And while he has deleted it to get on with his own thing - you don't know that, do you...?

Hand Kissing

Last Spring, I was kissed on the hand by three different men - a family friend, a taxi driver, and the doorman at a tavern all within a week of each other.

I was surprised by these unsolicited kisses, and I wondered if hand kissing was back in style. Why had no-one warned me?

I mentioned these incidents to the Word Wizard, who seems to know something about every topic. He quickly responded with questions, "Did you offer your hand to be kissed? Did they touch their lips to your hand?"

No, I had not offered my hand to be kissed, and in all three instances I was tricked into receiving the kiss. And, yes, all three had touched their slobbery lips to the back of my hand.

I have since become a little wiser about hand-kissing, and so, gentlemen, if you want to kiss my tiny tender nymph hand

• I must be the one who initiates the gesture by offering you my hand palm down;
• I must know you;
• You must be of equal or higher mythological standing than I am;
• You must slip your fingers under the palm of my hand and gently rest your thumb on my knuckles;
  
• You may either quietly air kiss the back of my proffered hand, or kiss your thumb;
• You must kneel at my feet as you kiss my hand to show that you are in awe of my charms, and
• be forewarned that, according to W.J. Bethancourt III, should you offer an unsolicited kiss I am in my right to eviscerate you on the spot!

FLASHFLASHFLASH!!!!!

Uh oh. Suddenly, Shania Twain is single again... and 4th Dwarf is a die-hard country music fan. When in his cups, he's been known to publicly bemoan the fact that Canada's Country Music Cutie In Incredibly Abbreviated Outfits ever got married. He always said it should've been her bed his moonboots were under. Fourteen years ago, and the shock still feels just like yesterday to him. She broke Dwarfie's heart. Oh, sure, he says he burned all of her CDs, but on certain dark nights, the sound of her digitally-enhanced voice could still be heard seeping beneath the door of his grotto, singing harmony to loud tormented wails. It was all very embarrassing.

What effect this earth shattering news will have on his revolutionary new dating paradigm research is anybody's guess. Will Dwarf's hope rise, phoenix--like? I dunno. But I bet this'll probably be interestin'...

RNDP 2: Hooking Up?

Google's next hit in our quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP) is an article called Sexuality, Reproduction and Menopause : Editorial: the new sex in ... Although we cannot see the article because it is behind a pay wall, Google tells us that it says:

The new dating paradigm is to get together casually, called “hooking up,” a term that defines a lack of commitment or expectations other than sex and ...

4d Analysis: Unfortunately, I blew my research funds on a bottle of tequila and couldn't afford to buy this article. They might be on to something, but isn't "hooking up" what fuck buddies did in the 80s and what free-love hippies did in the 60s? In other words, not new?

The rumours are all true....I have a huge crush on Milan!

I can't help it. This young man is BRILLIANT, a prolific blogger, an amazing photographer...and he's adorable! Have you checked out his c.v.? After reading his two posts of today, I can't contain myself anymore! He got me with the lemonade stand metaphor...or, was it a simile? And the "Aragorn Fallacy"... I'm speechless. I'm in love. I know, he is just a teeny bit too young for me. I think we can overcome those decades. Look at Demi and Ashton. If they can do it, anyone can!

Buckyblog #2: too cute by half

Huh. Apparently, kittyblogging has strict rules. Who knew? Since the Short Guy, in addition to being a hairball expert - he's one himself - is also a tiresome pedant, I have no reason to doubt him. Speaking of hairballs, you should see the size of them! Huge, sploogey tan and brown things, covered in cat spit and splattered all over the antique cream broadloom! (We coyotes keep a very retro-stylish den...) Yucko!

I would've asked Aggie what to do about them, followed her advice, then reported the amusing results, but an urgent matter has arisen. Note the calculating expression on Bucky's puss: It comes to my attention that all cats are members of a fiendishly well-organized cabal dedicated to taking over the world. They infiltrate people's homes, weasel their nefarious tunaheaded ways into positions of trust, suck the air out of their alleged owners' lungs until they can't think straight (Various Zoom postings and comments passim) then run the world by proxy whilst their hosts are weakened and suggestable.

But they want more. And they have the means to do it. Read this carefully, and don't let your cat see you when you do it: Every cat in the world is in constant extrasensory communication with every other cat. It's a maleficent feline group brain, dedicated to total domination. When they're ready, they'll pounce, take over the world, and likely snack on your cold, dead fingers as an afterthought. They're determined, cunning, organized, and very, very good. Look at the evidence: innocent coyotes are being chased out of Greely and Richmond as we speak! Coincidence?

The good news, is that you can fight back. If you have an ounce of spine left, break out the tinfoil and start making hats. No, no, no, not for you, you oxygen-deprived fool, for your cat. Slap one of them suckers onto a furline and it'll cut off all group-mind brainwaves instantly. Oh, even then, it'll still try to play the cuteness card. Resist! Don't let your cat doff its tinfoil hat! Your future depends on it...

Overheard in Ottawa

On the #14: Two acquaintances discussing call centre work

Earnest young woman: I just tell them I'm Canadian and they come around.

Lord of the Rings Fan: Is it legal to tell them we're Canadian?

Earnest young woman: It's not. I say I'm originally Canadian, and working in New Jersey and it's cold...

In a Transitway Shelter:

Algonquin Student (to her cell phone): No, no, 56 mm is fine. Alex had the super-sensing ones and he said... [lowering voice] It's weird 'cause I'm talking in Baseline Station... but Alex said... anyway he said 56 is fine.

A franchise opportunity for Coyote

Creepy as ever

Was pleased to see that the Elgin Street Irregulars still have the monopoly on creepiness.

More People Trying to Limit my Dating Life

Bad enough that the Chair set out strict limits on who I get to go out with, there's a bunch of Midwesterners producing propaganda reels.

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