Category Archives: Culture

Big Dee Dee Not Home Free!

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Rock? Lobster

Rock? Lobster

Canadians from Port Alberni to the Bay of Fundy have been riveted by the tale of Big Dee Dee, a rare LOUS or Lobster of Unusual Size.

Indeed, at a strapping ten kilos and old enough to vote in human elections, Big Dee Dee was unquestionably the king (or queen…I didn’t look that closely, I must admit) of the ocean floor. Until s/he was caught, that is. Caught and put up for auction like a common slave. The biggest bid came from a mysteriously nameless Ontario organization and is this the right time (yes, yes it is) to tell you that my father used to make a pretty penny back in the Seventies shuttling semi-comatose lobsters from the Maritimes to Toronto on condition he not look inside more than the top case, as the coke and pot were packed in between lobsters on the lower levels.

Seafood, particularly live seafood, confuses the dogs’s noses, you see. That’s why every time you see mixed seafood on sale at T&T you can bet that Hastings is going to be wild that night; they can take a bath on the price of the seafood, as it is incidental to the profitability of the actual cargo.

Mysteriously nameless Ontario organization, but we can be pretty sure it wasn’t the Boy Scouts offering a cool five thousand for the meaty crustacean. And, indeed, they would have had their wanton way with Dee Dee, had it not been for Vancouverite and vegetarian Laura-Leah Shaw and her two anonymous Eastern backers, who made a counteroffer of $3000 and hella publicity. It looked as if the lobster were saved, that Dee Dee would once again crawl and flit in the turbid, reversable waters of The Bay of Fundy.

But it was not to be.

t’s bittersweet news for Big Dee-Dee, a 10-kilogram lobster, as the creature has avoided a butter bath on a dinner plate, but won’t be heading back to the ocean anytime soon after all.

Instead, Big Dee-Dee is destined for a coastal New Brunswick marine facility…

Breau said on Sunday that he’s decided he’ll instead be giving the lobster to the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews.

“I thought about it for quite a few hours but I thought it’s best for business to do it like this,” Breau said. “No bitter feelings.”

Au contraire. To those faceless, nameless Ontarians, it leaves a distinctly sour aftertaste. I hope that’s one fisherman who doesn’t end up swimming with the fishes.

The Deadbeat Club

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Well, I’ve never been one to dip a toe in when I could plunge over the cliff taking an entire bus with me instead.

So…Facebook.

MistressCowfish suggested I start a group, because after Friending people, Grouping is teh hawtness on Facebook, which sounds to my elderly ears like a rave gotten completely out of control, but whatever.

I have Grouped.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ll find me at The Deadbeat Club (cue Metro‘s bitter humour…).

Inspired by glorious deadbeats throughout history such as the authors of Frugal Indulgents, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Quentin Crisp, Vincent Van Gogh, and that guy … you know … that guy whose name I can’t remember, who destroyed his priceless collections and then killed himself rather than let the collection fall into Ceasar’s hands. See, if Boris would join the group he could tell us who that was.

Yes, surely in a Deadbeat Club there’s some room for rich, sore losers. Especially if they’re buying.

Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Undecided, please raise your glasses, mugs, or sippy cups to our anthem:

The Deadbeat Club by The B 52’s

I was good, I could talk
A mile a minute,
On this caffeine buzz I was on
We were really hummin'
We would talk every day for hours
We belong to the deadbeat club

Anyway we can,
We're gonna find something
We'll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rain

We're the deadbeat club
We're the deadbeat club

Going down to Allen's for
A twenty-five cent beer
And the jukebox playing real loud,
"Ninety-six tears"
We're wild girls walkin' down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big time

Let's go crash that party down
In Normaltown tonight
Then we'll go skinny-dippin'
In the moonlight
We're wild girls walkin' down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big time

Anyway we can
We're gonna find something
We'll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rain

Chorus

Oh no! Here they come
The members of the deadbeat club

Canadian Beaver goes Brazilian and comes out on top!

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Canadian Beaver. Friendly!

Canadian Beaver. Friendly!

Beaver. Who doesn’t love beaver, eh?

Okay, so I stole that headline, or most of it, from Vancouver Theatresports when they competed for the world comedy improv championships in Australia. And I had to tweak it from “We’re going Down Under to come out on top!” but hey, it still works.

And who doesn’t love beaver? And Brazilians?

Okay, maybe Christopher Hitchens, but that was a Brozilian and, as such, completely different.

These beavers gone Brazil are still fully-furred. They are fully-fanged as well, and in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the cattle barons and soybean growing enviro-rapists of South America, a government-funded organization has labeled the mild-mannered (and, if anything, excessively polite) Canadian Beaver as the largest single threat to the South American ecosystem.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

The document, presented to both governments this month, says only a multimillion-dollar project can protect South America from tens of thousands of beavers gnawing their way through its woodlands…

Fifty North American beavers, Castor canadensis, were introduced to Tierra del Fuego, in southern South America, in the 1940s in order to establish a fur trade. It was a catastrophic mistake. Numbers multiplied dramatically and beavers spread across the archipelago, crossed the Magellan Strait and are now spreading through the mainland….

‘The ecosystem in North America evolved along with the beaver,’ said Donlan. ‘Vegetation there has adapted ways for dealing with it.’ North American trees can grow back from their roots after beavers have gnawed them down, for example.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Now, nobody is pretending that a sudden, unnatural influx of Canadian Beaver is entirely without effect, my ex’s reaction notwithstanding and, indeed, that is why he’s an ex, but it is entirely possible to protect one’s precious and presumably precarious homestead from an influx of aggressive Canadian beaver without taking refuge in expensive governmental flights of eco-fiction.

Just tell her you need to fill your Valtrex prescription, for instance.

Geekaerobics with Elijah Wood

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This isn’t a workout video, but it should be! This mashup of Yo Gabba Gabba and The Numa Numa Song (Dragostea Din Tei) would be an instant hit, whether released as a regular DVD or in specially adapted format for the WiiFit. We’ve all seen and enjoyed those videos, haven’t we?

So here is music geek Elijah Wood with the post-postmodern children’s television geek icons from Yo Gabba Gabba, prancing and dancing and even (apparently) moonwalking, a risky move that has been known to be fatal to street cred.

Enjoy?

Octopus Sex Man Gets Off

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How’s THAT for a title?

Yes, Rodney Scott McLagan of Hobart, Australia, hereinafter and for the rest of his natural life at the very least known as Octopus Sex Man, has been released from custody with a $1500 fine and a suspended four-month sentence for possessing 31,000 images of pony, snake, dog, tiger and octopus porn.

Said the judge:

“Without the opportunity for normal sexual relationships fantasy is often indulged. It also emerges from the report that you are particularly self-conscious about your teeth.”

It is reportedly the first case of British teeth being responsible for a shokushu goukan fetish. Still, better that than throwing him back to try to swim in the human gene pool; It’s polluted enough in those waters. The Zeta Male is (surprisingly, given his usual body composition) the very opposite of buoyant.

I suppose that’s why he likes the bottom-feeding octopus.

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife