Unsurprising breaking news: Transit strike continues

Transit workers yesterday rejected the city's 'final' offer in a federally-supervised vote requested by the mayor and council.

The 75 per cent margin among those who voted appears to be a convincing rejection of the city's offer, and of Mayor-Larry-driven negotiating tactics that tried to bypass union leadership.

A recent poll suggested most Ottawa residents sided with council, calling the offer "fair" and saying transit employees should accept it and get the hell back to work.

But we coyotes can't help wondering if this had something to do with the City's carpet bombing propaganda blitz, featuring multiple full-page Petfinder ads per day. All of which pretty much called the offer "fair" and said transit employees should accept it and get the hell back to work. The union hasn't exactly been fattening local media ad coffers to win hearts and minds, so the poll results are make sense with that in mind. And frankly, most Ottawhatamies are pretty tired of adapting to no buses, as magnificent as they are at it, whether they're union-friendly or not.

Now, neither side is exactly covered in glory here. I have heard from possibly reliable sources* that senior drivers game that contentious scheduling roster system to work less and earn more. But the city negotiated that system to address serious Transpo dysfunction and morale problems a decade back, and drivers took long-term pay cuts in exchange for it. I wonder why city ads don't address this sore point, and harp instead on wage offers that on the surface indeed look "fair"? Those disingenuous full-pagers and negotiating (negatiating?) tactics make bulls in china shops look positively sprightly and graceful by comparison. Landed giant squids flopping airlessly, I can see.

Last night, in an attempt to substitute his personal reality for the one he habitually rejects, the mayor slipped 300 union members who didn't vote, into the percentage of those that actually voted to reject the offer, to style his smackdown as closer to 64 per cent. Ummm.... by that pretzel logic, the vast majority of citizens that didn't vote for him in the last municipal election deserve a different mayor, don'cha think...?

I still blame Larry. But I always do.

* Someone who knows someone. You know how it goes.

Ti-gris is bad....

Ti-gris is out of control. OK, all you cat people out there --- how do you "train" a kitten? Also, how do I help my calm, older cat deal with the trauma of having an insane younger brother. Help!

Changing the channel

Don't look outside, just gaze at the photo

It's a Hoot

A few years ago, when Hooters first came to Ottawa, I thought it would be entertaining to see what all the fuss was about.

A male companion and I sat down at a table, and after a long wait a cute blond waitress skipped over to us. I admired her fit body clad in tiny tight sports shorts (the kind I had worn when I was sixteen) and her tight little wife beater t-shirt with the trademark protruding owl eyes design. She placed both elbows on the table, leaned over and cleverly aimed her tits at us.

"And what can I bring you folks today," she giggled smacking her gum.

She took our order and as she wiggled off I looked at my companion curious about his reaction.

"It's all just an act you know. She's a university student trying to earn an honest living," he stuttered as I noticed the deep blush on his face.

On the Web: Dipthong and Homeslice

I'm sure you've all seen that Language Log is promoting the use of the word "dipthong" as an insult. Chris Pott's writes:

My wife's (very scholarly) Forbes Library book club is reading Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn this month. The book seems to be full of wonderfully inventive swearing. Last night, my wife read this one aloud to me (p. 170):

If I wanted a gun, I'd get a gun, you diphthong.

Diphthong works remarkably well as a pejorative. Curious about whether this was Lethem's innovation, I searched the Net for "you diphthong", figuring that the initial pronoun would cut down on merely phonological discussions. Precision was still poor — a mixture of phonological discussions of you and fortuitous juxtapositions of these two words by programs for generating random text, but the search did turn up a few cases of genuine expressivity, and I discovered that the Urban Dictionary has an entry:

1. diphthong: A vowel combination consisting of a weak vowel and a strong one. It is more commonly used as an insult, seeing as it is a legitimately funny word.
There is a diphthong in "loud."
YOU'RE A DIPHTHONG.

[Source]

You'll be happy to know that I've gone to the Urban Dictionary and thumbs-upped the above definition. And you'll also be happy to know that other uses of dipthong as an insult show up on Google when you put an asterisk between "you" and "dipthong", for example:

• "Here you are at last, are you, you blankety-blank mick dipthong!" he yelled blood-thirstily. "Where you been? You want to make a nervous wreck outa me?
  
• I’ll go to federal prison before I play this charade with you, you duplicitous, grandstanding dipthong.

I am happy that highly-regarded Language Log (Technorati Authority: 872) is using the Urban Dictionary to promote words just like I am.

Although I am sad to see that you dipthongs (not you, Zoom) have not been voting for my definition of homeslice. Maybe if one or two of you would come through, I'd be back at number 1.