Cue the evil lighting...

An elliptical voicemail led me late last night to the doorstep of Mister Sloppy's evil world domination HQ in Centretown. After I buzzed the intercom and the reinforced door silently swung open, I let myself into the computer room. There, Mister Sloppy looked ineffably smug.

"Oh, hi, Slop! You called?" I said.

"Indeed. I brought you a gift from my trip."

He pushed a small corrugated carton toward me. One heady sniff and I opened it. Two dozen extremely fresh bars of Cailler Ultrafine Dark. None of that Tobler crap... Mister Sloppy's taste in gifts is legendary.

"Thank you!" I said gratefully. "And how was the vacation?"

"It was... very fine," he said. "Ate great ice cream. Sailed a private yacht on Lake Geneva. Took an excellent Swiss train to visit the Large Hadron Collider..."

"And how did that go?" I asked, an alarm ringing faintly in the back of my mind.

"It's working again, isn't it?" purred Mister Sloppy, fixing me meaningfully with a bright blue eye. "And good thing, too. I'm gonna be needing it."

"Eep! So you're still on the world domination thing?

"Does the mayor think he's finally a real civic leader because he hung out with Prince Chuck and John Baird's hair for a photo-op? I'm all over it!"

"Ummm. Oh. Look at that! It's bedtime for little coyotes. Thanks for the chockies. Gotta go! " I yelled over my shoulder.

"Oh, I know." Mister Sloppy's voice followed me out the door. "But you'll be back... I have more chocolate."

Fiend.

Tracking the mint's missing gold

I happened by Mister Sloppy's place yesterday - okay, he happens to have air conditioning - and by way of breaking his grumpy Evil-Genius silence, mentioned the Mint's vanishing gold problem, and how the local Petfinder was just yesterday obsessing again about the strange silence of government, mint and red coated gendarme types.

Mister Sloppy snickered. My usually cast-iron coyote tummy clenched. That laugh is never good.

"Slop," I said, fearing the worst. "In your obsessive quest for world domination, you haven't sucked 15 million bucks' worth of gold into an improbability vortex? Or something?"

"I didn't need to," he cackled.

"Huh?" I can be a dimwitted doggy. Especially when it helps me enjoy nice cold air conditioning a bit longer.

"You know how the Tories - having such terrific heads for business - are all hot on selling off prime government assets at fire sale prices? To allegedly balance the government's books, even though it always loses major money?

"I was rummaging around a government network one night a coupla years back and sniffed out the fact that their brain trust had decided to flog the mint's extra gold inventory in secret. To - get this - one of those "We buy all of your used gold - no amount too large or too small" joints that advertise on late night cable channels. I hacked myself into a few emails as a discussion option, and incorporated myself as a cheap gold buyer the next day. Bought a few ads in throw-away tabloids and on cable to look legit. Hung out. Waited. The government showed up in no time!"

"Aaand?" I breathed.

"I drew up a contract they couldn't make head or tails of. Not that they ever make head or tails of anything," he snorted. "When the dust cleared, I had signatures on an airtight document assigning me fifteen million bucks in gold ingots and assorted refining scrap, purchased for the princely sum of thirty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents. Which, by the way, is actually about what most old gold places would have paid 'em. A buncha the backroom guys from the PMO are now so redfaced, all they wanna do is drop the whole story down a mine in Sudbury."

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta pack." Mister Sloppy looked dreamy. "Maybe Switzerland. The ice cream in Zurich is fabulous this time of year."

"So you're taking a well-deserved break from planning world domination?" I said, hopefully. I've had enough Pepto-Bismol moments lately already, with Mayor Larry back.

Mister Sloppy cast an austere blue eye at me. "Of course not! The Large Hadron Collider is there, too..."

Summertime's small pleasures

Drippy weather didn't stop Cedric from enjoying a week at a cottage in the idyllic Gatineaus. He even made a new friend who calls himself the head gaffer and drinks a lot of herbal tea. I'm glad the little troll is having a good summer, but I'm not crazy about him hanging around Hollywood film-biz types.

Why are airports so boring?

IO's note: This was written Thursday but I had trouble posting it because I was, er, stuck in an airport.

I am stuck in an airport. That's a bad thing. Airports are like the bland yet evil automatons that populate sci-fi movies. Veritable zombies of the travel world. They are pretty much all alike: devoid of personality, soulless and vaguely annoying. (An exception is the colourful Morun airport in northern Mongolia, which features a billiard table, sandstorms and squat toilets.)

But it doesn't have to be so. Here are five ways to improve airports:

1. More comfortable seats. What is it with these bench-like things with stubby armrests and nowhere to put your beverage?

2. Cheaper prices. The airport is like some former Soviet republic where inflation is always running at 483 per cent.

3. An Internet cafe. What better place for one?

4. A craft co-op. Why not a spot where the vibrant, cool art and handmade goods produced in our city can be displayed and sold?

5. A giant aquarium. Travelling can be stressful. Watching seahorses cavort and tropical fish glide through the water is a good way to relax. They are the smart ones, choosing to swim rather than fly.

Record snowfall accumulation?

No. Nope. Noooooooo. Hell no! Not until we've had at least another eighty-seven freakin' centimetres....

Field Report from Audrey

Earlier today, the lovely Audrey sent this report from Venice to update us on the progress she and the Independent Observer are making on their Italian research mission.

8:30 a.m. The IO woke with a start and saw it was too early to get up. He channel-surfed through CNN, Sky News, BBC World Service, ten Italian stations, one French station, and one German station. 'Street Legal' was on in Italian. Another Canadian drama was on the French channel, with subtitles en francais.

9:30 a.m. Breakfast in the elaborately frescoed dining room with Audrey. The IO tried to ignore the insistent American tourist who kept badgering the Japanese waitress: 'Two cappuccinos... two cappuccinos... two cappuccinos... two cappuccinos...' The IO ate a croissant with jam, two slices of ham, two pieces of Swiss cheese, a bowl of tinned peaches and fruiti di bosco yogurt. He yearned for fresh fruit. Although he was longing for a coffee, he delayed ordering his caffè Americano because of the irritating American tourist.

A gondolier sailed past the window singing O sole mio and the IO turned to the window and focussed his camera on the party of tourists in the boat. One of the tourists, a cute brunette, focussed her camera on him.

10:30 a.m. Leaving the hotel for a day of sightseeing, the IO says hello ('ciao!') to the comely receptionist, and wondered yet again if she was really Italian (she seemed to speak perfect Italian), or if she was Austrian, German or Swiss. Or Swiss-German? She was fair with freckles... He thought about asking her where she was from but Audrey's beckoning kept him on his path to the front door.

11:30 a.m. - 8:30 p.m. The IO was kept busy with tourist activities: the John Singer Sargent exhibition of Venetian paintings (marvellous!), shopping with Audrey (Her frequent plea: 'Sorry, sorry , sorry, but could we just look in this shoe store...'), a tour of the Doge's Palace, a walk along the canals, making mini-movies of pigeons in Piazza San Marco with Audrey.

8:30 p.m. Audrey asks 'Is that your friend?' The IO turns to see. A glamorous blonde floats across the Piazza San Marco in a long white skirt with a tight, light-pink blouse. It is the friend the IO is to meet. She embraces the IO and extends her hand to Audrey. All the men nearby are envious. The IO decides that it will be an interesting evening...

11:30 p.m. All have finished dinner. They are walking along the street, near the Rialto Bridge. The glamorous blonde is looking for a café that she remembers from the week before, when she was out with her classmates. Audrey is looking dejected - she is footsore and tired of drinking. She does not love wine as the others do. Plus, she is the third wheel! The IO does not notice that the glamorous blonde wants to be out and about, to have fun, to be seen, to be admired. His repeated requests to stop at quiet bars or to sit at quaint piers are rejected. However, when it is time to go home, he gallantly escorts the glamorous blonde to her boat, and then across the canal to the island where she has an apartment. He kisses her goodbye, on the cheeks. He returns to the hotel by vaporetto.

Venice has blindsided this reporter with her beauty.

WebSlavery Vacation

You've heard of working vacations? Busman's Holidays? I would give anything to be on one of those. Instead I have landed in web slavery.

It all started innocently with a trip to the coast to visit my pirate relatives and an old mining friend. The mining friend, we'll call him "John" has a young daughter, "Juniper", with many interests. Last night, just after I found out about the size of Megan B's feminine attributes, John logged me into his daughter's Webkinz account and started me playing Quzzy's Word Challenge.

Three hours later, I had made it to level 6 and had earned 272 webkinz dollars for Juniper. I spent 3 of those on mushrooms to feed her "pets" and 42 dollars on a pair of brown corduroys for her pink poodle.

That was bad enough, but this morning, Juniper set me to tending her crops. I'll tell you, I wish I was back in the salt mine.

Links: Wipipedia on game farmers; 1 Up on game slaves

10 Vacation Tips

1) If you need to get up and actually do something when you are on vacation, make sure you use a functional alarm clock. Test it to make sure it works properly.
2) Don't rush when you are on vacation. Relax your body. Slow it right down.
3) If others around you are stressed when you are on vacation, get the fuck away from them. Go to the beach. Go for a drive. Do what you need to do.
4) Plan, but don't overplan. When going to the beach, it's nice to have 1) cold beer or cider 2) a few snacks 3) sunscreen 4) a towel 5) water and 6) reading material. That's all you need, and you don't even really need all of these items. You could get away with just the sunscreen and the towel in a pinch.
5) Don't drink too much every day. It will make you feel bad, and then you'll have to drink more.
6) Check your restaurant bills when you are on vacation. Sometimes when you are relaxed you miss things like being overcharged for entire dinners you didn't order.
7) Remember that when you are vacation it is not about what you accomplish in a day, it's about being a complete underachiever.
8) Read and sleep a lot.
9) Don't eat battered seafood everyday. It will make you sluggish.
10) If you are not completely relaxed and feeling like you are on vacation, don't get stressed about that.