Category Archives: Canada

Watch Out!

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Genuine Fake Watches
Image by orangejack via Flickr

I posted this in the technical support forum first, for reasons that probably have more to do with the fact that I’ve had three Martinis than any other ones, but where was I? Oh yes, stories about my mother’s time in Saudi Arabia are popular, as are Schadenfreude tales, so I thought you’d like this.

My mother was working in Saudi Arabia and got a boyfriend there, an American CIA agent whose day job was teaching battlefield communications and whose night job was running a private casino/brothel for blackmail purposes of the US government. She figured it out when all his paycheques came from the Pentagon, and I figured it out when I heard he’d been in prison on a 20-year sentence, was released when he agreed to serve in Vietnam, and that his CO in Saudi in the 80’s was (coincidentally?) also his CO in Vietnam. As for the blackmail, it went “hello, PrinceWhatever, we have photos. We would like the development contract for X province”.

Anyway they bought a fake marriage certificate from a Filipino forger who was, apparently, legendary in the days before desktop publishing and swung through Riyadh once a year (she briefly considered buying me a Harvard PhD but it was $500 and she cheaped out, which is why I still have to scramble for a living BUT I’M SO OVER THAT) and lived as a married couple. I met that guy’s son many years later in a small town in Indonesia, but that’s a tale for another time.

My mother brought Jerry From Alabama, her boyfriend, back to Vancouver to meet her daughters. Well, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree and we’re both very opinionated my sister and me. And while my sister isn’t a snob, I did get that gene, plus her share. My sister somehow got the “obliging” gene (and GOD knows where she got it from) so she adopted his accent instantly and he could NOT figure out why he liked her better than me, right from the start. But then, maybe he was just psychic.

So, we’re sitting at dinner with Jerry, and my mother has obviously told him I’m a snob (taking credit for her ,work? I dunno), and at some point something happens And. Dude looks me in the eye, takes off his watch, hands it to me (WTF?!) and says, “What do you think of that?”

I look at it. It’s a “Cartier” but the second hand ticks, it doesn’t sweep. I turn it over, and it has the classic beefy Cartier back.

I say, honestly, “That’s a really good fake.”

He collapses in mortification, and my mother collapses in laughter.

Quiz: What part of Thanksgiving are you?

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We’re not being premature here: we’re being Canadian. Very few people outside of my mighty nation-state know Canadia has their Thanksgiving in October, before the Great Ice Spirit moves in and crushes us all to the ground, all but the mighty Ice Truckers. But it’s true.


You Are The Cranberry Sauce


A little sweet, a little sour – you’ve got the flava!

Though, you do tend to squish in people’s mouths…
As to that last bit, well, you’ll have to ask my last boyfriend…if you can dig him up (uh, I mean find him).

Be a Movie Producer!

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or look just like one…

Oh god, not ANOTHER one!

Oh god, not ANOTHER one!

No, it’s true: this is a plan to enable you to put “movie producer” on your business card, which will come in handy on a Friday at the clubs, if no-where else. Actually, it will count for something with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who will allow any actual credited producer to purchase a ticket to the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars.

Come to think of it, I’ve got a friend who’s always wanted to go. Hmmmm…

Allow me to introduce With Glowing Hearts, the motion picture:

So far, so awww, right? Yes, it’s an inspirational documentary, perhaps the least likely to be commercially successful genre of film in filmdom. How can you become a producer of this acclaimed-but-so-far-unreleased soon-to-be-classic? Easy; everybody knows there’s one way to become a producer.

You come up with the money.

In this case, you can come up with amounts as small as a Toonie:

Making a film costs money, and although we’ve done a great job at keeping our costs down there are certain expenses which are unavoidable. That’s why from now, until the middle of August, we’re running our Toonie and Tweet Torch Relay to help get us to the finish line and to get your name in the credits.  Starting with a minimum contribution of $2, “producers” can have their name published in a word cloud that will appear in the film’s credit roll and on this site. Increasing your contribution will increase the size of your name in the cloud.

All money collected will go directly towards costs related to finishing and distributing the film like insurance, music rights, and salaries for the great people who have been working on the film with us.  Just click on the Chip-In widget to the right and follow the instructions to use either your PayPal account or credit card, note that transactions are conducted in US dollars but will be converted to your local currency on your bill.  The name that is associated with your PayPal account is the same that will be used for the credits, if you would like a different name to appear in the credits please indicate that under “special instructions for vendor” on the “Review your payment” page.

Sure, it says mid-August, but if you ask nicely you’ll probably find there’s always room for more money (though perhaps it will need more zeros after the 2). Go on, haven’t you always wanted to be a Hollywood big shot? I hear Clooney is breaking up with his latest bimbette, so if you’re a brunette and you can get him good and drunk at the Vanity Fair afterparty, you’ve probably got a shot.

The Most Canadian Story Ever Told

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Bear none.

I mean Bar None, which is a nice bar in Yaletown and surprisingly unsnooty, although that’s probably just because it’s too dark to see if they should snub you and also because I know the right people. But the bar is not what I mean, unless you’re speaking with a broad Eastern accent, in which case yes, it is.

I mean this:

by Wayne Barnes, Tofino Photography for the Raincoast Education Society

I don't remember reading this part in the Cthulhu Mythos

That is a BC Black Bear totally pwning a servant of Great Cthulhu. These bears are normally peaceful creatures, doglike, even timid:

They enjoy nothing better than playing on the trampoline, relaxing in a hammock, or enjoying a pic-a-nik basket with pals.

bear fall down go boom

The workers couldn't wait for their turn at the Bouncy Castle!

but when they are protecting their territory, hunting for food, or taking care of those they consider family, they can be ruthless. The so-called Red Devil Squid in the top picture must surely have gotten too close to one of the cubs, or possibly attempted to make off with the bear’s particular crop of salmon.

Now, from deepest, darkest Christina Lake, British Columbia comes word of a new kind of bear.

Not that kind.

This kind.

Damn straight they do, especially when the people steal their stash

They'll pry the machete from my cold dead paws

It seems a local farmer had developed a close relationship with some 13 neighborhood black bears, to the extent of feeding them, handling them, taming them, and really, everything that can still be mentioned on the evening news short of folding, spindling, and mutilating them. The bears, in turn, acted as guardians for the farm, which was a farm which required guardianship, what with it growing 2300 plants of the finest BC Bud, a crop worth enough loonies and toonies to keep the bears in dog food and the farmer in Gucci for many a year.

Amusingly, unless I’m misremembering the name, this farmer would be the selfsame Justin who used to be the assistant manager at one of the billions of Starbucks at which I worked; in this case, the one at Main and 14th. I heard him on the phone once in the back room, saying to person or persons (or ursines) unknown, “No, it’s perfect. Jimmy’s father is overseas for a few years and has to rent out his land. It’s surrounded on four sides by corn farms, and corn is, like, TALL. The neighbors aren’t nosy at all, and the only access is a private dirt road. It’s PERFECT, I’m TELLING YOU!” and then he looked at me funny, as if I was eavesdropping or something, and said, “I’ll call you back.” He quit shortly after that…to become a farmer.

He was a very, very smart boy.

Anyway, not only did this farm eventually get busted, guard bears or no guard bears (they were probably on a pizza and dorito run, if I know stoners) but while the arresting officers were figuring out what to do with the semi-tame bears, BC bear fanciers (more than you’d think, unless you’d been to the Pumpjack on a Friday night) got themselves together to petition for the freedom of the bears, who face the death penalty for … being bears that eat whatever’s put in front of them.

Pot Bear is a new subspecies

Doesn't he look terrified?

They don’t appear to constitute a terrible threat to the public safety, what with chasing thrown sticks and all:

“They were tame, they just sat around watching. At one point one of the bears climbed onto the hood of a police car, sat there for a bit and then jumped off,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Fred Mansveld.

That said, you apparently don’t come between a bear and his favorite crop.

The strange tale of some B.C. black bears that were caught guarding a marijuana grow-op has gotten stranger, after someone stole the confiscated pot from the RCMP and tried to protect it with a stash of stolen dynamite…

On Thursday, RCMP obtained a search warrant for a nearby property in Greenwood, where they found a stash of about 10 kilograms of marijuana stolen from the lockup, including a small amount from the Christina Lake bust.

The officers also found a grenade, a loaded 12-gauge shotgun, and two loaded rifles.

Of even greater concern to police was the stash of about 19 sticks of dynamite they found rigged with homemade fuses, according to Cpl. Dan Moskaluk.

Well, that IS a matter of great concern. Everybody knows bears are slackers when it comes to safely handling explosives.

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Gravity: I haz it

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And it appears this dude does not:

Yes, it’s very, very mean of Patrick to pretend to pass out at the controls of a small airplane, leaving his obviously non-pilot friend to freak out in close proximity to a video camera.

Very, very mean. Also very, very funny.

Which reminds me of the time, and stop me if you’ve heard this one although you really can’t stop me because this is my blog, dammit, and we’ve already established that I do not take requests, so here I go, blogging it anyway and if you really want to be stopping something, that thing? Should be reading.

There, glad we could clear that up.

Now that we have cleared it up, here’s the damn story:

Wiarton beach; that is Colpoy's Bay. No really, way more terrifying from a plane

Georgian Bay, if you don’t know, is rather wide; in fact, I believe the technical designation for a body of water that size is “ginormous.” And off this ginormous body of water is a smaller, yet still substantial inlet called Colpoy’s Bay. This Colpoy’s Bay leads to the picturesque town of Wiarton, of which we have spoken elsewhere, and which plays no part in this story except that it is from whence we took off that day in the plane, and was the town to which we hoped to return alive (I was raised to have low expectations, which makes total sense if you’ve ever seen Wiarton).

One of the things we had to achieve, in order to achieve the latter, that is return alive, is cross Colpoy’s Bay, for lo, we had been up in Buttfuck Nowhere, which is pretty much anything near Wiarton that cannot even be described as “as big and important as Wiarton.” And, as we were crossing the bay (I should explain we were not crossing in a boat, nor even a raft, nor by swimming nor walking on the water, for it is far too pretentious for the likes of us to be showing off in that particular way and besides, we save it for Sundays; no, we were crossing in a Cessna 172, a fine, sturdy little aircraft that seats two: in this case, me and my father. My father and I.

Whatever.

And then the engine stopped.

Let me repeat: there we were, halfway across a significantly-sized body of water in a tiny single-engine plane when the single engine decided to take the day off.

What happened then: my father became quite a different person entirely; why, you could hardly call him chatty at all! and he began flipping many switches, toggling many toggles, and dialing many dials. The plane, of course, began to free-fall towards the surface of the water, which is never a comfortable position for a thing like an airplane to be in, much less an airline passengers such as, in this case, myself.

Now, my father had trained both my sister and me (I? Us. We.) to fly planes before we were 10, but he had neglected to teach us how to restart the engine in mid-air while plunging towards a watery grave. So after a moment of thinking “can I be useful here? Nope. Maybe I can hold in my farts and help float us a bit?” I sat back and let him handle it, while I watched with very big eyes and kept my hands folded quietly in my lap.

After about ninety seconds or it could have been five lifetimes, the engine restarted and we toodled the rest of the way across the bay quite normally and proceeded on our route. About ten minutes after that, I tapped my father on the shoulder and asked, “Dad, was that supposed to happen?”

Dear Patrick’s Friend:
THIS is how you handle a problem if you’re a small Canadian girl.

Contrast and compare.