Whaaaaaat?

I just figured that, since Sun TV is gonna go all Foxic News North on us, it should have a classy new logo. The old one is as boring and dull as, ummm, the existing media that the new Putative Stun Channel hopes to thrash.

So, you know. Something restrained. Classy. Understated yet evocative. And with all the wit and public charm of its new, formerly pasty and now oddly-tanned executive guy, Kory Teneycke. Former Stephen Harper spokesthingy. Former Mike Harris backroom braintrust kid. Y'know?

But it wasn't easy. Endless concepts. Days of consultation with the Research Director. Multiple versions. Accusations of overthinking everything.

And locating a cuddly new mascot. You have no idea how hard it is to find a one-winged turkey vulture that can still, actually, you know, aviate in the solar wind...

Please...

...make the angry wasps go away! For days, they've followed me everywhere I go, drivin' me crazy and causing me to beg complete strangers to stand ready with EpiPens®!!

Listen to me when I say my Google Poem

* Put the donut down and listen to me when I say, introducing and adopting new habits doesn't happen overnight.

* Listen to me when I say you don't have to listen to me.

* alright buddy listen to me when i say that this man has spent his entire life researching things like this so dont tell people he has no credibility.

* Please listen to me when I say that even waterproof cameras cannot withstand underwater photography.

* please listen to me when I say this…he will NEVER change.

* Shut your piehole and listen to me when I say that I am FINISHED with the checking-of-the-bags CONVERSATION.

* Ok, listen to me when I say I've been in this situation, and I can tell you really want her back, so there's only one thing to do, ask her to meet you somewhere, don't buy flowers or anything, just do simply this, when you see her tell ...

* Please; as a scientist, and a geologist, listen to me; when I say that you should do your research more into this, before either failing to act, or acting improperly;

* Listen to me when I say, as long as you are happy with you, as long as you are healthy, as long as you are breathing, living, as long as you are YOU, you are beautiful.

* I am sorry but if you guys want me to listen to your life, how about listen to me when I say mine.

* Listen to me when I say that you've bought into an idea that DEFIES intelligence. You're happy, and we're all glad for that, but I am so sad and disappointed that your happiness has come at the cost of common sense.

* Sometimes I really wish you would listen to me when i say I need help.

* Secondly, please listen to me when I say that this boyfriend of yours doesn't sound like good news.

* But please listen to me when I say this, it's not all about how much we earn in our websites

* i wish someone would listen to me when i say stem cells.

* Listen to me when I say the laundry doesn't matter!

* I know that so many girls think drugs like this are an easy quick fix, and if you were one of them I really hope you will listen to me when I say how stupid they are.

* Listen to me when I say Nocando is the world's new hope for rap music

* listen to me when I say this — There are a couple of situations in which honesty is NOT the best policy.

* So listen to me when I say that mistakes and cheating are dangerous, in many, many ways.

[source search]

We paws for technical difficulties...

The as-yet-unnamed critter is outta the bag. Mere femtoseconds after the Stately Glob disclosed former Harper media thingy Kory Teneycke's lengthy obsession with firing up a hard-right Foxic News North - now bankrolled by Stun news chain owner Quebecor Media - the chattering classes leapt on it. The principals maintain an annoyed tightlippedness at their premature outing. Damn them left-wing media, anyway!

We coyotes were never ones to resist a good (heh...) dogpile, so leave us hasten to leap.

Teneycke is one of the smallish subspecies of over-partisan neoCons who opine ("Rightly" as opposed to correctly) that Canada can only benefit from the import any truly lousy political developments from the (pre-Obama) US.

Actually, his former boss is another. So we could do worse than to ask - pointedly - just how much fatherly blessing the PM is giving Teneycke on this.

The PM has shown a hard-line, hard-right hate-on for the media in this country since getting elected. He's tried, not without success, to control the message by excluding them wherever he can and substituting a flurry of PMO spin. But still he keeps getting shafted by them media bastards at odd, inconvenient moments. Imagine that. So having a "real" TV network to tell self-serving lies about ummmm, fawningly propagandize his every move, would probably look like a winner.

I've noted before that this particular variety of neoconservative feels constantly aggrieved about the way the media portray 'em. It's an article of faith. Which means it ain't backed by facts. They don't seem to get that: 1) they're not really a representative majority in Canada; 2) that while they're "Right" all of the time, they're not right all of the time, and; 3) that there might conceivably be any legitimate criticisms of what they do.

Lacking such basic self-awareness, they resort to any tactics they think will help 'em change all that, however ill-advised for the country. They assume Canadians would love 'em if they could just control the message tightly enough.

If this thing goes strictly to the Republican, ummm Tory, ummm Kory plan, the proposed network eventually would tilt the country's already quite conservative (actually, thank you) media even further off that desirable centre bubble.

Us coyotes guess that the PM and his ummm, brain trust don't think they've trashed what lately passes for public discourse in this country quite enough yet. Apparently they envy what's happening down there... Jesus wept!

So I guess it finally comes to this: us against them, lie for lie. Down and dog-dirty. And speakin' of truly lousy ideas, we're up to it, and already up and running. We are also open to investment funding. The Coyote News branding is already sewed up, but I'll give that Teneycke kid a hot tip from the left paw anyway: Beaver News. The Google hits on your website'll be massive...!

The real reason for Lake Fake

O, hai! I imagine you've heard by now that the PM's Billion Dollar Baby includes a $2 million fake indoor Muskoka-type lake - which it pleases many Canadians to dub Harper's Folly - for TV guys reporting on the G20 to stand in front of whilst they report. All without, you know, having to deal with the actual pesky outdoors.

I will not waste time pointing out the multiple layers of irony inherent in the attitudes of, ummm, democratically elected leaders who think the main perk of being such leaders is the ability to officially fence out the hoi polloi - with the dirty rabble's own money. How sweet is that? I digress.

No, we coyotes are more interested in why the PM, so notoriously disdainful and dismissive of media et al, would want to make this kind gesture. He claims marketing. We coyotes respectfully suggest that it might be because Lake Fake will afford a fine spot for the PM's evil henchthingies to corral the media and keep a covert eye on the entire sodding bunch of 'em from an underwater command post. Say, with all the high-tech stealth observation gear on one of them bargain-basement used Royal Navy submarines we haven't been hearing so much about, lately... heh. Ahoy, polloi!

***Update***Update***Update***

About the time we posted this yesterday, a clearly pissed PM was lecturing, as if to idiot schoolchildren, that Lake Fake is not a fake lake at all but a "water feature" and that it only cost $57,000, as part of a larger $2M marketing pavilion.

For our part, we 6000-year-old, semi-mythical, totemic, animistic coyotes reserve the right to play as fast and loose with truth and the facts as do ministers of the current government.* Especially the minister that is the biological host of John Baird's hair.

We stand by our version. As loudly as possible.

(*We know full well what a dangerously slippery ethical slope this is. And that we're prob'ly goin' to some seriously semi-mythical, totemic, animistic version of Hell for it. We signed a waiver...)