Tips for Criminal Masterminds: Skill Building

Not quite ready to take over the world? Perhaps you need to strengthen a few skills or develop some new abilities. The City of Ottawa offers a number of low cost programs that can help you.

There are many suitable offerings in the Spring – Summer 2011 Recreation Guide. Here is a small selection from the adult program:

Public Speaking
Improve public speaking with practical tools including breathing techniques and voice work. Build confidence addressing a group in a supportive environment. Skills help in various professional settings.
Nepean Creative Arts Centre – 613-596-5783
Fri 6:30-7:30 pm
Apr 8-May 13 $61.25 645286

Chivalrous Sword Handling
Sword fighting? You mean like Lord of the Rings? Train in the safe handling and fair usage of the European Broad Sword.
Instruction includes parts and history of the sword, shield work, code of Chivalry and how to make chain-maille armour.
Plant R.C. – 613-232-3000
Level 1
Sun 10:30 am-12:30 pm
Jul 10-Aug 28 $90.25 635205

Hypnosis – Basic Techniques
Hypnosis is a tool to communicate with the subconscious. Learn how to achieve a deep sense of relaxation and assist with habits and goals with the guidance of a certified hypnotherapist.
St-Laurent Complex – 613-742-6767
Wed 6-8:55 pm
May 25 $68 636776
Jun 15 $68 636778
Jul 13 $68 636781
Aug 3 $68 636784
Aug 24 $68 636786

The City also has a program to prepare your children to become better henchmen for you:

Spy Camp
Hone your craft, meet ‘real spies’, and run training missions through top-secret briefings and activities. Develop a disguise, make and break codes, use escape and evasion techniques, create spy gadgets, and uncover the science in spying.
Pinecrest R.C. – 613-828-3118
6-8 yrs Tue-Fri 9 am-4 pm
Aug 2-5 $132 644569

FAQ
Q: Are there other courses I should consider?
A: Absolutely, if you haven’t worked your way up to Ballroom Dance Level 10, get on it right away. And if you have not mastered an obscure musical instrument you can start with piano lessons. The piano is not an ideal instrument for an evil genius, but learning it will help you learn how to play the pipe organ.

Q: Should I sign up for one of the dog obedience courses?
A: What? The only dogs an evil genius should have are attack dogs managed by a professional trainer. If you’re looking for pets, it’s cats or reptiles.

Q: Until my plans come to fruition, I’m a little tight on funds. Any way to get a break on registration fees?
A: Of course. Just apply to the Fee Assistance Program.

Ottawa's anti-prorogue rally

Ottawa's prorogue protest, timed to coincide with several dozen across the country today, wasn't exactly slick. It was long. The student cheer leaders were endearingly amateur. A speaker or two wandered lengthily off-track. And there looked to be a lot of ad-hoc cooks trying to salt their own spice into the bouillabaisse.

But ya know what? If it had all been slick clockwork, I would have been more concerned. That might've meant some oily pro had pumped backroom grease into what looks to be real Facebook populism, rising spontaneously among concerned citizens.

Ya know what else? It was big. Far larger than the coalition rally after Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued in late 2008.

Even so, I heard a trio that looked like pro journalists, asking each other as pros are sometimes wont, if there was any story.

We coyotes, amateur and unjournalistic to a fault, would say there is. It is this: Anger and frustration over Harper's cynical manipulation of the democratic process in general and the prorogation card in particular is grassroots, authentic, and to be reckoned with.

If no smooth professional political types are involved yet, it may well be because the PM's disregard for the niceties of traditional politesse confounded and hamstrung them.

But while he smugly ties Parliament in knots, apparently he forgets that the real power of this country rests in many millions of people who, while they may never step onto the Hill, care deeply that what goes on there should be aboveboard. Especially when somebody starts jacking around with it too much. There's irony in self-anointed populists being bitten by the populace they claim to represent. Based on today's event, the PM might do well to remember that. If he ever got it in the first place.

After the Flirtation: Getting some Action at the Movies

There has been some talk around here lately about flirting. Seems some of you are comfortable flirting, some of you have issues with flirting and some of you don't know you're being flirted with until someone plants a wet one on your lips.

I, of course, am an expert on flirtation, but rather than share my expertise with you people at no charge, I am holding out for a government contract. As you've no doubt heard, the government of Singapore has introduced a university course on flirtation. In a year or two, they will need someone to lead their graduate-level classes and they'll be looking to hire me. Either that, or our own government will realize that Canada is falling behind in the love-gap and bring me in to straighten things out.

Still I have some advice for you developmentally-delayed daters. Here it is:

Movies are for First Dates!

I can hear you already! "Are you crazy, Dwarf? You don't go to a movie on the first date! You can't talk at the movies. You can't learn more about the person."

I say, "exactly!" You can't talk at the movies. The more you talk with someone, the more likely you are to find out things about each other that will turn you off. There is plenty of evidence that the time you spend before the movie is more than enough time for two people to become attracted to each other and things you believe are turn-offs and turn-ons for you, probably aren't. [e.g. News or Journal].

And if you don't know each other, after the movie you will have a shared experience to talk about.

Then there's the situation where the date is with someone you know really well. Maybe for years. Had lunch together every work day for months. Helped each other buy clothes. Let's face it, if you're in this situation another opportunity for talking is not going to help you get on base. Go to a movie.

You're in the dark, you can't talk, but you can smooch. If the movie is awful, smooching will improve it; if the movie is wonderful, smooching will add to the emotion.

Tips for Action

1. Sit in the back row. So you won't feel observed.
2. Wear a shirt with buttons. If you're wearing a boy shirt, sit on the right, your date's hand will more easily slip inside; sit on the left if you're wearing a girl shirt.
3. If you're holding the popcorn, accidentally move it when your date goes for it, gently place their hand where you think it should be.
4. If your date is holding the popcorn, accidentally miss the box, let it stay there longer than necessary.
5. Ostentatiously yawn, stretch your arms, and let your arm fall over your date's shoulder. Smile to show that you're being funny and know that you're using the oldest move in the book. But leave your arm there.
6. Your hand may just happen to fallen over a breast.
7. And unconsciously squeeze at a moment of comedy, tension or drama.
8. If something scary happens, grab your date's arm or leg.
9. Or if something funny happens.
10. Allow yourself to find things funnier or scarier than you would normally.
11. You can't talk, but you can whisper.
12. Whisper things like "that outfit would look good on you" or "I bet you'd deal with a bad guy the same way".
13. While whispering, your lips might accidentally touch your date's ear. Pretend it didn't happen and keep whispering.
14. Or acknowledge that it happened and just start kissing.

If at any point in this process your move is rebuffed, just say, "sorry, I get affectionate at the movies" and go back to being just friends. If they go to a movie with you again, you'll know you are in there. If they don't, maybe you'll move on and stop wasting your time with a hopeless unrequited passion.

Other resources:

• Video: How to go on a date to the Movies
• Advice: How to See a Sexy Movie and Not Have Sex After
• Wiki: How to Kiss
• Instructable: How to Kiss
• Podcast: First Kiss Tips for Christians

Down. Word. Dog.

The Irregulars have been all over the Word Cop thing, and I have watched with yellow-eyed jealousy. Yet my oppositional defiance disorder has been playing up big-time, so there's no way I'm slavishly following the pack. But. Grammar rants are soooo tempting. And the material soooo rich. So I've decided to bite Mother Corp's ass on pronunciation. Close enough.

We coyotes wake up darned early in the morning. Given our druthers, we like to eease into full awareness with our eyes closed for a bit, listening to the dulcet tones of the CBC announcers who read the early morning news and financials before 6 a.m.

More than a few mornings recently, my sleepy eyes have jarred open in outrage and shot lightning of a kind normally reserved for pre-migraine auras, as those dulcet CBC tones egregiously jackboot certain words. Repeatedly. Word has it that Mother Corp used to have a pronunciation guide, and woe betide the dumb rookie who blew off that part of the exam. But it seems that things have gone to hell since Lister Sinclair booked it, apparently somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Sure, I'm cranky about it. I'm enough thousands of semi-mythical years old that I've earned the right.

Ottawa Morning's news guy has a cringe worthy speech impediment that causes him to utter the word DEE-fence repeatedly when speaking of things related to this country's armed forces, while the woman from Calgary who covers gas and oil drops frequent clangers about Alberta's REE-source management.

This is just wrong on so many levels. For one thing, Alberta hardly manages its resources lately, it sells gargantuan quantities of them at fire sale prices to ingrate, mostly-US-based multinationals. I digress. We'll speak of the true definition of 'stewardship' another time.

The Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Edition, above, or any other Canadian dictionary, is clear on this point, dammit! Defence. Resource. Neither is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. Unless you were concussed in peewee hockey and have since watched way too much of that sterling grammarian, Don Cherry on TEEvee. Unless your name is Bubba from Alabama and you drive a NASCAR veeHICKle. Or unless you're George Bush. But even the people that elected him have finally realised he's an idiot.

I'm just sayin'.

Conrad 101

News item: In an e-mail to an Irish newspaper, Lord Black expressed an interest in teaching other inmates.

We're sure he could show them a thing or two . . .