Root, root for the gnome team

Cedric attended the very first Cubs home opener at Chicago's Wrigley Field (then known as Weeghman Park) back in 1916.

After his favourite team lost the championship to the Boston Red Sox in 1918, the pint-sized fan vowed never to return to the ivy-covered shrine until the Cubs won the World Series.

But he couldn't wait forever. After all, the tiny guy's life expectancy is only another 126 years.

Cedric enjoyed his return to Wrigley on the weekend, watching his beloved Cubs down the L.A. Dodgers, nibbling on hotdogs and slurping a brew or two.

He's no slouch on the field, either. Cedric had the highest on-base percentage during his two seasons in the 1920s with Blue White Amsterdam of the Dutch Baseball Union. His secret? Pitchers walked him almost every time because his strike zone was -- and still is -- only one centimetre.

A Sign that Might Not Work as Intended

I look like a slob, but I actually try to be tidy. When I was relieving myself the other evening while reading this sign, it didn't make me less tidy. It didn't even distract me from "aiming". It did tempt me to be oppositional. But I yielded not to that temptation because I am trying to get better at doing exactly what I would have done even if someone hasn't instructed me to do that very thing.

I wondered though if these signs work on the people who aren't tidy anyway.

Because I'm thinking the swinging dick crowd would see them as more of a challenge than a reasonable request.

Of big swinging appendages *

Our on-hiatus for legal reasons mayor has a pottymouth problem. Among others, since his fascination with the felicitous phrase, "big swinging dick contest", entered the court record this week past on a lo-def police interrogation video. (Hey - who doesn't look guilty on those...? But with no corroborating evidence, he could safely deny the whole rat fuck thing. This was right there in grainy black and white.)

Citizen editorial writer Kate Heartfield - one of the good guys at that eroding edifice - has smartly and thoroughly whacked the language's psychology with a post-modern feminist yardstick, in print and on air. I think that covers it completely, except for small additional light the phrase may cast on O'Brien's record. Ummm, in office.

It's not as if we didn't suspect that he regards his political day - or in the case of the Transpo strike, most of a financial quarter - as an endless series of big dick swinging contests. Supporting evidence for this inference is rich.

Maybe the mayor enters such duels because he honestly thinks his is bigger than everybody else's. Why would he believe this? Possibly because he lucked out in business and has a lotta money. Maybe because he only hires assistants that reinforce his own perceptions. Perhaps because he has temper in private and has demonstrably whirled through a veritable spin cycle of revolving-door staffers.

Doesn't matter. Unfortunately for Ottawa, this view was probably never grounded in reality. Also unfortunately, Mayor Larry is a guy who for some time has been enthusiastically dick-swinging his way straight into The Peter Principle. Problem is, he's so pathologically - and unjustifiably - self confident, he'll never know it. Sorry to keep going on like this. Honestly, I was tired of him before he was elected.

* Just so you know, the photo is named that way because original graphic concept for this post did not make it past certain members of the ESI Ethics Committee. (It also grossed out Woodsy, which takes some doing. I'm kinda proud of that.) And no, it was not what you were thinking just now... and neither is this one. It's a perfectly innocent tee-shirt graphic, for cripe's sake. Purell® your minds, people! We run a squeaky clean metablog here!

A Dog and His Man

Coyote, it's not often that I see a doggie that's cuter than you are, but I'm afraid you have competition - look at that proud muzzle, that shiny pelt, those muscular haunches. His human isn't too bad either.

After I snapped the picture the cute puppy continued to be cool, and his man flashed me a sexy smile.

First, we take the Marriott...

I was among the fortunate to witness the sublime Leonard Cohen show Tuesday at the National Arts Centre.

The crack band, stellar songcraft and engaging performance would have been enough. But we also got some good advice from the Minstrel of Mount Royal that went something like this:

"The band spends a lot of time in hotels. And I've noticed that in the bathrooms you will find small, round magnifying mirrors. No one over the age of 15 should look in one of these mirrors."

Hallelujah.