Stuck Inside of Riverside With the Richmond Blues Again

It's coyote season again!

Local media have returned to the evergreen story of coyotes (gasp!) eating cats in the 'burbs, and of death squads hunting us down. The only new twist is that the killers are trying to appropriate the touchy-feely language of psychobabble to explain how they 'manage' coyote/human interactions by 'establishing boundaries'.

I guess maybe guys who murder stuff for a living have a lot of trouble with their karma. And, this being Ottawa, they've decided to try to re-spin the cosmos.

The one on CBC Radio One's Ottawa Morning positively squirmed when Kathleen Petty cornered him into admitting out loud that 'managing' pretty much means 'killing'. He drove the semantic bus straight back to 'management' as quickly as he could, but you could practically hear Kate's eyes roll when he did.

I still find it fascinating how many urbanites want houses with all the perks of country living, as long as they don't have to, you know, deal with the actual messy ruralness of it all...

So I just wanna say, in coyotes' defence, that these suburban excursions ain't exactly our fault. You saw this morning's news story about car companies falling over themselves to licence Bob Dylan's voice for their in-car GPS systems? They didn't make it out to be a done deal, but since Bob is the Head Coyote, I'm pretty sure that our contractual confidentiality agreements can be loosened to let you know that we coyotes have already been beta-testing it.

So those coyote encounters? It ain't us, babe. The test version, like Bob, has, ummm, mumbly moods. Any coyote that has not ingested massive quantities of hallucinogens at some recent point in their life has got no hope in hell of translating the incomprehensible blithering.

Hey. That incomprehensible blithering is why he's our oracular spiritual leader in the first place...

But we, like, you know, end up lost in places we shouldn't be, starving and eating cats to survive. As you may imagine, our karma suffers terribly from this. However, I'm sure they'll fix it in the production models...

Together at Last

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(OTTAWA - Aug. 21) Ottawan’s have waited for this moment. And now it’s here. Two musical greats bring down the house in this once-in-a-lifetime concert event.

On Saturday night at Britannia Park, on one stage, at one time.

Bruce and Britney: Together at last.

Hear some great collaborative songs:

Hit Me Baby One More Time (and I will go to the Woman’s shelter)

If You Had a Rocket Launcher In Your Pants

Toxic (Chemicals that is)

I’m a Slave 4 U and Your Fascist Architecture

Rumours of Glory Booty

It’ll be social justice-alicious.

-30-

We Love Zoom, or The Canadian Culture, Eh! Game

Zoom, you've been concerned that Canadians have no culture. You have also mentioned in the past that you love playing games. So, today I took the photo above for you, so that you can play at spotting the five things that are part of our Canadian Culture in the picture (click on it to enlarge).

Have fun! And, yes you will get a prize out of this.*

*Contest only open to those named Zoom who own a blog named Knitnut.

Dirty. Secrets. Buzz. Shower not included.

We ESIs have a recurring conversation along the lines of: Are we simply shameless? Or are we desperately shameless?

With that in mind, a new book caught my roving eye: Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz by David Seaman.

Now here's an author who walks, er, rather, runs, the talk. Scribe Seaman promises in a press release to jog around New York's Times Square naked if his book doesn't crack the Amazon.com Top 100 within three days. That takes cajones, or at least the willingness to flap them in the Big Apple breeze for all to see.

"With the recession as it is, sometimes an author has to put everything on the line to get attention for a worthwhile and exciting read," Seaman says. "Book sales are down at an apocalyptic rate for most authors due to the downturn, and I'm willing to take a risk here . . . This book is worth my reputation, and possibly a couple nights in prison."

The tome is billed as "the definitive guide to guerrilla fame and cutthroat viral marketing."

And the ESIs should leap on Seaman's advice like Jack Layton pouncing on a can of mustache wax.

A few choice chapter subtitles:

* Celebrity Tabloids: Getting in them or staying out of them
* Enemies are more important than friends
* Be Outrageous or Die!
* Google juice: hot links from highly rated sites
* TV doesn't make you - you make you
* Get ten thousand visitors for free through StumbleUpon
* Overcoming publicity post-partum depression: Knowing when and where to find the next hook

Having said all this, I'm not sure Ottawa is ready for the ESIs parading their individual wares down Elgin Street if we fail to win a CanBlog Award. (With the possible exception of Coyote, who never wears pants.)

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..."