Warning: Cool people will be thrown from building

Credit: my keen-eyed nephew

Feet, however, are permitted

Alexandria, Ont., Nov. 21

The principal principle principle

Lately, I have noticed a disturbing trend in the language of the prime minister and his henchthingies. You know, the new-but-rapidly-aging trick with which, faced with any old screwup of their own making, they contrive to still appear (heh...) right, because their stand is based on "Principles".

This phrase is uttered in tones of finality. The kind that suggest that all things the PM labels as "Principles" cannot, must not, be questioned. By anybody. Because it's, you know, a Principle. Therefore Unassailable.

To the PM's fans, the term also implies pleasing undertones of moral discourse. Therefore even more Unassailable. One never negotiates Morality.

In a short time, the trick has become a trope, the new lazy-ass-all-purpose spin management tool over at the PMO. Splop a few random "Principles" into the speaking points on everything very arguably sketchy and/or dumb and, hey, presto, all butts are completely wallpapered clear up to the ethical ceiling. Which at this juncture, is, ummm, low.

My Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Ed.©®™, is an admirably clear (and massive) reference, but with two-odd dense pages of alternative definitions for "principle" ya know there's plenty of room for creative (and handy) misinterpretation.

Avowed principles - especially in politics, and especially among recent ruling parties, are not necessarily fundamental or immutable, or even true. They are ideas upon which policies are based. Sometimes pretty bad ideas. Even rotten ones. If you have a minute, you could look up "rotten" in the Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Ed.©®™.

I could, of course, have gotten all of this deplorably wrong. I am semimythically canine and fallible.

The prime minister could - and maybe would - logically argue that his principles can't be wrong. Because he has none left.

I don't get paid enough to create Google poems

* I don't get paid enough to deal with this guy!

* I don't get paid enough to fix it.

* I don't get paid enough to do this job

* I don't get paid enough to potentially get blown up by an IED and be away from my family for a year ($2250/mth right now), but I do it anyway.

* I Don't Get Paid Enough To Blog (2), I should know better then to do meta

* I don't get paid enough to even consider it.

* I don't get paid enough to explain this, but I promise twenty, thirty or fifty years from now, a house bought will be worth more than you paid for it today. You'd have to be stupid as a zombie to keep paying rent...

* I don't get paid enough to kiss your a**!

*You ruffle too many feathers, and at the moment I don't get paid enough to handle the stress of that kind of feather-ruffling on my front page with my name over the top of it.

* I would definitely take my tantrums elsewhere, but I don't get paid enough to.

* I don't get paid enough to be abused.

* I don't get paid enough to put up with the crap that people are giving me.

* I don't get PAID enough to spend as much time as you do here.

*I don't get paid enough to put up with a toddler that gives me bruises and bites the hell out of me every time he gets put in time out.

* personally, I don't get paid enough to be a judge for everyone in the blogosphere.

* I don't get paid enough to touch used panties, and I won't do it.

* I don't get paid enough to live in fear of being hacked by my fellow co-workers.

* I don't get paid enough to think.

The colour of poppies

A day or two ago, one of this city's newspapers rapped a local peace group's white poppy campaign for civilian war dead, disparaging it as "a bunch of hippies giving big group hug (sic) and hoping for peace." Editorial reaction elsewhere is nearly as churlish, leaning toward telling "the peaceniks" to butt out of the official red poppy drive. The Royal Canadian Legion is unamused. It apparently has the poppy copyrighted. And maybe poppyrighted.

One can find an individual veteran or two who sees nothing wrong with the idea, but most news seems to hold crankier quotes, working up a fine lather in the week before Remembrance Day. Discourse in this country has gotten impolite everywhere, not just in that asylum on the hill.

Canada's last veteran from that long-ago unpleasantness just died recently, but when I was a slightly younger coyote, there were still any number of people who had served in the First World War, living their lives. They dwelt on future walkers, wheelchairs and care homes rarely, if at all.

One, whom I happened across quite often as he hiked in the foothills near Calgary, was one of the most pacific men I have ever met. I don't think he ever raised his voice about anything. I do not recall that he spoke about his part in that conflict, either, except to mention that he'd spent two years at a sanitarium in southern Ontario, recovering from tuberculosis after the war ended. He also mentioned humourously, in passing, exactly once, how he and other soldiers in the trenches would amuse themselves holding cootie derbies and laying penny bets, after picking lice off of themselves to race up broomstraws. There wasn't much else amusing going on, obviously. He never spoke of war otherwise, and when others did around him, a quietly pained expression crossed his usually-happy face.

He always kept a red-flocked paper poppy pinned to the lapel of his topcoat. I, being a coyote, did not trouble myself as to why. But one who knew him told me he felt bound to honour his old comrades beyond November 11. And in the way it has with semimythical coyotes, the west wind told me even later that he had been invalided out of the trenches of northern Europe just at the end of the last miserable winter before the Battle of Passchendaele.

There's not much more to go on but supposition. But I think he may have been - by the simple good luck of nearly dying from tuberculosis at the right time - one of the few in his regiment to live after the generals ran it into the machine guns. And that he wanted, as long as he could, to carry the standard of their memory. On the unspoken evidence, he seemed to value civilian lives just as highly as military ones. I think he approved highly of peace. I rather suspect he would see no difference between white poppies and red ones. But then, we dogs are colourblind...