Category Archives: Canada

my country, the homewrecker

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Dudley did right!Viva Canuckistan!

Yes, it’s our fault that Paul McCartney is divorcing Heather Mills. Specifically, it’s the fault of the Federal Fisheries Minister, Loyola Hearn. At least he has the whatever-fish-have-instead-of-balls to take responsibility; he also fesses up to having been behind the Pamela Anderson/Kid Rock re-uptuals.

CBC has the report:

Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said he and fellow Newfoundlander Danny Williams helped take the shine off the former Beatle’s relationship with Heather Mills. So how did a couple of East Coasters manage to orchestrate such a stunning marital meltdown?

Hearn said it all started with McCartney‘s famous appearance last spring on the “Larry King Live” CNN show. McCartney, an animal rights activist, was debating Williams, the Newfoundland and Labrador premier, on the merits of the seal hunt.

Hearn said McCartney showed respect for the points Williams made in defence of the hunt, but his wife – apparently a more zealous anti-sealing activist – was “not so gracious…”

Of course, it hasn’t been all bad news for anti-sealing celebrities. Hearn noted that Pamela Anderson got hitched – to musician Kid Rock – after protesting the seal hunt.

You can imagine our pride…

smells fishy…

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 Martha Stewart Living Behind Bars

You know the old joke: what do you call an open can of tuna at a lesbian’s housewarming?

Potpourri.

I know it’s a bad joke, but they’re my specialty. Which brings me to today’s post about not Squid, but Shrimp. Shrimpy the Shoplifter, to be specific. You know he’s gonna have a great time in prison standing still while all the men sniff his pants. Gotta be a dream come true for some guys, eh?

Giant Food Store employees watched as a customer slipped three bags of frozen shrimp into his baggy pants.

A few minutes later, as two managers at the West Market Street store struggled in the parking lot with the man they suspected was the thief, police said, two of the bags plopped onto the ground.

Then, the thief pulled out a hypodermic syringe from his pocket and threatened the managers with it, police said.

They didn’t take the bait…

And I thought my jokes were bad! Apparently the cops fished out the one bag of shrimp that stuck in the pants (to what??? I ask) and I’d guess it’s even money whether or not they all went back onsale.

There’s a booster ’round these parts that specializes in meat. He steals packages of meat from the grocery stores and sells them in some of the dive bars in the neighborhood; he’s quite well-known and people make appointments and pre-orders and drive in from the suburbs in their SUVs to buy the meat that’s been stolen and stored in this junkie’s pants all day, before being plopped out on a table at, say, the Balmoral, the American, or the Savoy.

Martha would never buy her meat that way, people! A free-range junkie thief is still a junkie thief, and his pants do not meet Foodsafe standards for meat storage units.

No wonder I don’t go to these people’s dinner parties!

Guess who's coming to dinner? Martha!

and I thought MY family was dysfunctional

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Yeah. You don’t know my family, but they give these guys a run for their money; only thing is, I’d be playing the mother in this scenario.

You see, once, long ago, I was little. And my little sister was littler. And we lived in Winnipeg.

(when writing about Winnipeg it is mandatory to use a macho, I-can-handle-the-weather, Hemingwayesque writing style, otherwise the Wendigo thinks you’re getting cocky)

And we lived in a little house, my little sister and I, and our mother and father, both of whom were rather diminutive, come to think of it, which I didn’t, then. And our little house had a little basement (the story of which I will tell you another time, as it is noncongruent with this one, so that’s why).

And we were in the basement, my sister and I.

I was riding my tricycle around and around the pillars in a figure eight, as one is wont to do when one is four and one is stuck in the basement with one’s little sister.

My little sister was holding onto the bannister on the landing and swinging back and forth, and suddenly, for no particular reason that she can recall, she let go and decided to fly.

Turns out she wasn’t very good at that.

Some time later, my mother entered the room, to find me now making a figure §. around the pillar, the other pillar, and the unconscious body of my little sister.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” my mother screamed.

“But Mom,” I answered, “She was being quiet.”

Now here’s a family that actually surpasses that remarkable benchmark of it’s not my problem-ism. from SmallHandsIck via Gawker:

My mother called me on the phone Monday, “Rachael you were right the play starts at 7pm so we’ll have to meet earlier– an hour earlier than I said.”
“OK.” I responded, and then continued, “Oh, yeah I just remembered I have to call Dad.”
“Well, he’s in the emergency room, so I don’t know if he’s going to pick up.”
“What?”
“Maybe, he’ll pick up. I just talked to him.”
“What happened to him?”
“Hmm? Oh. Um. I don’t know. He’s in some sort of excrutiating pain. You know your father.”
“Were you going to tell me my father was in the hospital.”
“I did tell you.”
“Only because I brought up that I had to call him.”
“Rachael, your father was never coming to the theatre with us anyway.”

my new anthem: Bowie and Reznor: I’m afraid of Americans

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Carinthetical

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It happened like this.

Well, no. It didn’t; it happened like I’m about to tell you, but the telling of it happened like this…so we’re getting all un-meta here. Following me? I’m talking about the chicken, not the egg, but the chicken is pregnant.

All clear? Good. Let’s begin.

The phone rings. Well, not so much the “phone” phone, since the phone service is disconnected and I don’t get any calls on that anymore. No, it’s the object known as the phone, but not the phone service ie it’s not a phone call, although the phone is ringing, but not the phone I use for phone calls although that, also, is a phone but not the one that is ringing. Actually, neither of them are ringing per se, more like one of them is bleeping in an electronical manner and the other isn’t doing anything but sitting quietly and recharging after a long evening of Texas Hold ‘Em.

Got that? Excellent.

So when the phone which is still a phone but not the one that I use for phone calls is ringing or blinging or bleeping or whatever it is that you call that annoying verb, well not technically the name of the verb but rather the name of the activity that it is activating, for yo, it is very active, particularly for this late at night; so when it is doing that it means there’s someone at the door of the apartment building, someone who wants in.

It is, as I may have mentioned, the Downtown EastSide. Average life expectancy in 1996 was 32; highest North American concentration of TB, HIV, and the entire alphabet of hepatitis.

It is nearly midnight.

Now, when my phone bleeps at midnight, it means only one thing: Carinthia has a story to tell me.

So I buzz her in.

“Well,” she says in her soft, well-bred voice. “I haven’t been over in so long because it’s been so long since I had anything for your…what-do-you-call-it…blog. That’s it: blog. I have something for your blog.”

And I turn the heater around so it’s warming her, and I wait while she stows her umbrella and peels off her woollen jacket and beret and continue to wait patiently while she fiddles endlessly and selfconsciously with her Hermes scarf, for I know this will be good.

And it will be.

“Well,” she says again, “As you know, I’ve installed safety film over all of my sliding glass doors,” and at this point I know it’s going to be about someone trying to break into her house. Living alone in this neighborhood, with a son in Venezuela when he isn’t in Antarctica, and a guardian cat with the heart of a neurasthenic fawn, she has had to take some precautions. And take them she has, not to mention the offensive potential of some of the things that go into her father’s old .44.

So, yeah, security film.

“Well,” she says, “It makes a horrible noise when the glass shatters, as I think you can imagine. The guy [she knows that I already know it was a story about a junkie break-in attempt, for what else could it be, eh? I ask you that] apparently got the surprise of his life when he found out he still couldn’t get inside. Of course I had my CD player sitting there, right where he could see it. So there I am, sound asleep in the other room, and suddenly I’m floundering around for my glasses, completely disoriented. And this continues for some time…”

“The smashing?”

“No, the floundering.”

“Oh, okay. Continue.”

“… for some time and then I hear, ‘Police, open up!‘”

Now, this is where it takes a sharp turn, for if there is one thing Carinthia likes even less than junkie burglars, it is police officers.

“and then I hear SMASH!…Police! Open up!… SMASH!… Police! Open up!… SMASH!… and so on, as I’m floundering around you know, getting my glasses on, looking for my slippers, tying my ratty old dressing gown. And I’m saying Just a minute but they can’t hear me for all the SMASH!…Police! Open up! that they’re doing, and I’m lumbering slowly down the hallway, for as you know I don’t move very quickly in the mornings at all, piping up with my little Just a minute! I’m coming, but of course they can’t hear me and all I can hear is SMASH! Police, and I see the front door shaking and I’m wondering if the pictures are going to fall off the wall.”

I think to myself I hope nothing happened to the Walker Evans but I say nothing.

“…and the poor cat…oh, the poor cat. She was just terrified! They don’t think of these things when they’re trying to break down your door, do they?”

“No, they do not.”

“No, they don’t. So there I was, still saying Just a minute and they’re trying to knock my door in but I waited and at just the right moment I opened the door.”

Which is good, otherwise she could have had a pileup of cops in her hall, which would be about her least-favorite thing to have, but I digress.

It turns out that several neighbors had heard the smash as well, and one had called the police, who were on the scene with remarkable speed. Another neighbor phoned Carinthia‘s house, but as she does not wish to be disturbed a-morning, she had turned the ringer off. Carinthia, I should explain, has a phone phone, the kind that takes phone calls and door buzzes. Cuz that’s how she rolls, yo.

No answer.

Thus, the police thought they were walking into a possible hostage-taking situation, hence all the door-smashing action. Apparently Carinthia’s precautions extend to having a steel door reinforced with three inch screws in the frame all around, etc, etc, in any case, those cops were some embarassed that they could not, although there were five of them, get into that damn house. But that they could not do, any more than the now long-vanished junkie.

Yet another neighbor had brought over his superlong ladder and yet more cops had climbed up to the roof, from whence the junkie had made his approach; that was where they saw the broken pane, on the second-floor balcony. Now, just how the junkie got up there I’m not sure, but when the cops left, they left the ladder in place.

Thanks, guys. Helpful.

Once the cops had untangled themselves they resolved into four uniformed individuals and one apparently-undercover fellow in a turban, shirt and jeans. Plus, by this time, about five of the friendly neighbors brandishing ladders, tool boxes, cellphones and, for all I know, first aid kits and collar-kegs of brandy. We all could use neighbors like that sometimes.

As the cops regrouped to the sidewalk to discuss the case, one of these neighborly saints-in-training offered to fix the window, the Co-op being typically non-responsive (the manager, it seems, is on holiday, so nothing is supposed to happen till he gets back; Carinthia phoned the President of the Co-op, who gave her the number for their glass door person, a number which was out of service). Another neighbor offered the name of a handy glass person. Eventually the president showed up with someone, but it’s the meantime with which we are concerned, for something very interesting happened there.

As the cops were discussing the case out on the sidewalk and various neighbors were making various offers of help, one particularly sharp-eyed fellow looked at Carinthia’s front porch and said “So what is that?”

It was a memory box: a memory box that belonged to the thief.

In it was: a probation order, newspaper clippings, postcards from home, and several love letters asking why he didn’t give up his city ways and come home when he had a good woman who loved him and you can be sure, dear reader, that I will publish more details when I get a good look at this collection of documents, for which I can hardly wait.

The Crown has decided not to press charges; not enough evidence to make an arrest, they say.