Happy Birthday to the 5th Muse

Because we remember where this all started, back in the heady days of 2005. Because we hope she's doing okay, wherever she is. And because nothing says "Birthday" like waaaay too much chocolate. Many happy returns of the day, from the Elgin Street Irregulars, ma'am! And good luck in the coming year.

That blissful post Canada Day feeling...

Ooh! Noisy airplanes!

That blissful pre-Canada Day feeling. . .

An irreverent pause

American stand-up comedian George Carlin died yesterday in Santa Monica of heart failure. He was 71. The creator of the Hippy Dippy Weather Man ("the whole country is high, man") and Seven Words You Can't Say on Television was a unique contrarian whose humour pointed up the absurdities (some pretty damn unfunny) of living on this planet. He was smarter (and funnier) than most of the politicians who ran his country.

The US Supreme Court ruled his routine based on those words was, indeed a bad thing. Actually, seven of them. Yet an entire generation made it a priority to know what they were. In his memory, we pause to recite the infamous seven, three times fast, giggling a little snarkily, no longer certain why the Supreme Court was so het up in the first place. Unless the prosecution wasn't really about the words, per se, but his attitude toward authority(ies)... Carlin will be missed, but not forgotten.

Image: The Charleston Paper