Nature speaks to PM on climate change?

Last night, we coyotes hunkered down in our La-Z-Dogs to TV news reports of a big-mother blizzard in our old stomping grounds.

Soon after, a semimythical puppyhood friend with whom I used to tear up the occasional poultry coop - just youthful hijinks, y'understand - sent along this shot from the local Doppler, saying, "If a random image of Jesus on a pizza can awe and inspire people, I figure a death's head can appear on weather radar by the same token. The prognosis is for blizzard conditions later tonight. But I'd have called this a blizzard 4 hours ago. Spooky."

The accompanying legend doesn't make it look like much snow, but keep in mind that this was just the buildup. And that it is in the nature of the place that, inevitably, a helluva wind came with it.

Being who we are, and of a semimythical, partly-animistic bent, we couldn't help but wonder, what with the Copenhagen world conference looming, if maybe, maybe, Ma Nature was sending a big-mother memo to id(iot)eologically-blind PMs with southwest Calgary ridings? Who think climate change is a 'socialist plot'....? Say, about fatally-misguided policies that support stripmining the Alberta tarsands, and damn all ecological consequences for living creatures?

Because, well, the death's head is centered directly over those particular PM's southwest Calgary ridings. I'm just sayin'.

Travelling incognito

Upon arriving at the airport in Bridgetown, Barbados, I noticed a sign informing visitors that camouflage is banned on the island.

I have concluded the reason must be one of the following:

1. The people of Barbados fear takeover by a camouflage-clad army of insurgents.
2. The country is populated by fervent hunters who may mistakenly shoot tourists disguised in camouflage.
3. Barbados has taken a firm stand against what is perhaps the most objectionable fashion trend of the decade.

Last gasp for downtown gas

Coyotes only drive in emergencies. But we did note with a twinge of passing-of-an-era melancholy that the last gas station in the downtown precinct proper was shuttered a week or so back, at Metcalfe and O'Connor.

The building was boarded, whitewashed, and corporate identities rapidly sanitized to erase all visual clues to the former proprietors' identity. A plethora of big ugly concrete blocks now bars pirate parkers. Since the corporation in question is so obviously deeply ashamed of what went on there, we will respect its circumspection, and discretely state only that their name rhymed with, ummm, "Shell".

I know hair-splitters are at this moment, thinking, "Oh yeah? Aren't there self-serves on Gladstone? And Catherine? Uh-huh. But they're all across Gladstone from downtown, and that's where I draw the line. My post, my rules. Brrrraaaapppp!!! I digress.

It's just another very late chapter in the story of the migration from downtown of actual services and businesses that actually make life work for actual live people. Lotsa bureaucracy, coffee and snacks, but heaven forbid you should want to gas your Vespa (or Buick) without driving halfway to the freakin' 'burbs. Let's not even start on free air. This gas station was perhaps one of the city's last petrol purveyors with a free air hose for all and sundry. (I think cyclists may have liked the place.) Or in another, less fresh but still rankling example, hit a Canadian Tire on your civil-servant lunch hour for a few hardware needs. Gone, gone and gone.

Downtowns need to be livable for cities to work. Even dysfunctional city councils at least claim to understand that. It's why they talk about urban intensification, and push big downtown condo developments in city plans.

Trouble is, the people who buy those condos have to drive to the suburbs to buy nearly anything other than take-out. The everyday businesses that that help make places really livable? Like, not offices, office suppliers, cafes, bars, or tchotchke merchants? They seem to be getting the hell out of Dodge. And leaving Dodge propped up on big ugly concrete blocks with the wheels off...

Free Cheese Magazine

Tired of reading about cheese on the internet? You can get a free copy of the winter issue of All You Need is Cheese mailed to your house by clicking on this link. I think it also gives you a subscription to subsequent issues.

[Just the thing for any one out there who belongs to a post-modern wankfest performance art group.]

Shocker.... mayor hires new mouthpieces.

This morning's local news has informed us coyotes that City Hall last night fired a PR guy. While hardly causing us to spew hot Ethiopian Yirgacheffe at the monitor, it did prompt eye rolls and longing thoughts of stirring in something a tad stronger than half 'n half.

The firing was nuthin' surprising in itself.

Since the last election, appointed staffers within throttling distance of the mayor's office have been, pretty much, reluctant temps. Terms vary, but a remarkable number have been scragged and hoofed out the high-speed revolving door down there, possibly for their curious inability to articulate our Beloved Leader's, ummm, belovedness to the masses.

No, what made our furry forehead wrinkle was the new hires in Fired Guy's place. Forgot his name already... can't keep track anymore. Sorry! I digress...

Anyway, they are (ex) print reporters Patrick Dare and Derek Puddicombe, very recently late of the Petfinder's and the Stun's respective city hall bureaux. Oh, and Chris Day, lately the press secretary for federal minister John Baird's Tory-to-its-roots hair. And possibly the hair of Baird's famously late ex-cat...

I expect that in an ill-lit corner at City Hall, an elected official of less than total competence and far less than total hirsuteness may be congratulating hisself on his self-diagnosed genius in suborning two local newspaper scribes, and buying stronger ties to federal conservatives. At least until he fires them all. Very soon, when he rediscovers that the public still thinks he's unlovable. But right now, I bet he's thinkin' he's finally bought the right mouthpieces for a clear re-election shot.

Both former journos, being who they are, have probably done their due diligence. Even knowing what they're getting into, they must've calculated that job security with Larry still trumps that at the shaky newspaper conglomerates that employed them, Canwest Global and Quebecor. Good, ummm, luck with that.

And maybe they can turn things around in time for the next election. Or maybe, just maybe, the mayor will continue to do things as he has, and we will finally get to vote him into a job for which he's temperamentally and intellectually more suited. Something in the private sector. Although personally, given his record of success in office, dog catcher would suit me just fine...