the blog quebecois

You are no doubt atwitter with curiosity: gnotalex, why yet another blog? It's not like there's a shortage of them.

And more to the point: Is this going to be one of those penny dreadfuls filled with bad poetry about your cat?

No, your cat is for the moment off-topic, though I reserve the right to publish bad poetry, feline-oriented or otherwise.

Actually, most of these pieces are from the vast archive of stuff that I really thought was funny at the time but couldn't sell to The New Yorker; or for that matter, the company newsletter. Philistines!

My apologies for some of the incomplete entries -- I'm working off hard copy in some cases; others are in some long-deceased wordprocessing format, so I can't simply cut-and-paste them. (And I am doing considerable rewriting as I go, the better to iron out the clunkier bits.)

I'll in the future mark those with an "Incomplete:" tag in the title.

Also, now that the Christmas hilarities have finally died down, I've got the time, I think, to add more current material, touching on the profound and momentous issues of the age.

Or possibly bad cat poetry.

I see that Colby Cosh has landed up in the pages of The National Post.

I'm not sure if it's just a freelanced piece or something more permanent. I hope it's the latter -- The Post can use all the good writers it can get these days.

Welcome, all you Moxie refugees! Feel free to wander around (the archives load scandalously slow) and kick the tires, so to speak.

If you haven't hit the back button yet.

Thanks too to Moxie.

I'm not quite certain on who she is, or what she does, but she's got youth, beauty, and a blogaliscious website in her favor. Also she tools around Los Angeles in her ancient Porsche.

This is a very alien lifestyle to mine, though I could probably get used to it real quick.

As it is I will wend the Porsche of my choice through the magically-unwinding French countryside. I love my Xbox.

And you will love Moxie too.

As is my habit on the Sabbath, I gather my family unto my bosom; and reflect on what is; what was; and what will be.

Failing that, I thought I'd bore my blogistas with musings random and sundry.

Sometime tonight the Sitemeter counter will click over 1,000 hits. So thanks each and every one of you, even if you've never returned, in which case don't let the doorknob hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.

It's been a . . . crazy rocket ride to the Top Of The, uh, Middle Of The, hmmm, Lower Middle, ah, forget it.

Also Crimsonblog was offline through most of the day; so my apologies to any who were inconvenienced. Both of you.

Well, I'm back in business, I think. Crimsonzine has been crashing regularly and it was entirely out of commission yesterday. I wonder if maybe it's been hit with that latest worm -- a lot of ISPs in the New York area were affected.

Be that as it may, you'd think that I'd have more to talk about with a three-day absence, but no: I'll just whine about how life is unfair and such.

If you were trying to get through (probably low on most priorities) to this site, rest assured I haven't died, rusticated to Thailand, or sold my keyboard for crack.

I aim to be around for a while, and if I have to build a more reliable blog, then I'll do that.

In fact, I am doing that at this very moment. (Not at this very moment, but you get the idea.)

Ho ho ho and around we go . . .

Aaargh. ithinkimbackithinkimback

My apologies again. Crimsonzine went down big time last week, topping it off with the blackout in NYC, where its servers are based.

In the interim, Andrew of Dodgeblogium invited me to guest-blog on his site. So I invite you to check it out.

I'm going to hold my breath over the next couple of days.

I don't suggest you do the same; but just in case, bookmark Dodgeblogium. It's well worth reading.

ithinkimbackithinkimback

Now I am torn between two lovers. (Sounds like fun, except for the part where the hip bones start to crack.)

I owe you, my faithful readers, and I owe Dodgeblogium some regular material, preferably on a daily basis. Problem is, if I've embarked upon one good idea that takes up most of the evening, then I'll have little left over for the other site.

What to do, what to do . . .?

Publish the same thing to both? Publish the same thing to neither? Funny here, serious there? Or vice versa?

How 'bout I just stop whining about it and put my ass down on the chair and write?

It couldn't do my long-suffering readers any harm, and it might do me some good.

Aarrgh! Is it Talk Like A Pirate day yet or did I miss that?

Checking the website, I see I still have a few days to work on my "Avast!"s and "Ahoy!"s.

Whatever, I've decided to somewhat take the night off. I've got friends coming over soon.

I did do some digging into my archives and posted "Uselessies" for the fine folks over at Dodgeblogium, because most of them haven't seen it. If you haven't seen it either -- well, here's your big chance.

I've turned the comments on, so commence commenting. Flames, spam, hacking attempts and publishing stolen credit card numbers will be strictly discouraged.

That's because I can't edit them out, or ban IP numbers. (At least not in Netscape -- if I get sufficiently alarmed, I can, with IE.)

Such, such are the joys of using third-party servers.

Well, then . . . nothing more, lads!

Carry on!

Smoke if you have 'em!

If you look to the left at my blogroll, you'll see a new entry: The People's Republic of Seabrook.

Judging by the name and the contents you might guess him to be a raging Commie lefty Dennis Kucinich-supporting moonbat.

That would be correct. However, he's had the impeccable taste to put me on his blogroll, so he's my kind of raging Commie lefty Dennis Kucinich-supporting moonbat.

Seriously, it's a very nice site with a lot of well-written stuff and a lot of links from all over the political spectrum, so you might want to take a look at it.

As should you. Go out and smell the flowers. Dance with a pretty girl. Scrub the Cosmoline off your AK-47.

Til' Monday, then.

Whew. Quite the weekend. There was my belated birthday party (it's not too late for shopping!) yesterday. My friend's daughters gave me Lord Of The Rings for my Xbox, because, as they diplomatically informed me, "We want to play it."

Fair enough; and if you want to buy something for my Xbox, you can come over and play it, too.

I'm not really a fan of the sword-and-sorcery genre, but LOTR is a Lot Of Fun, and the graphics are gorgeous.

In other world-shattering news, my MT blog is finally up and running. Public thanks to King Of Fools and Dean Esmay for help above-and-beyond the call of duty.

What happened was that on my initial log-in, I created a new ID and password and deleted the default MT settings. At this point the system kicked me back to the log-in screen. I dutifully entered my new ID/PW to find to my horror that I only had posting privileges. I really, really thought that I'd checked off the proper admin boxes, but I apparently hadn't.

For non-bloggers, this might be compared to taking the new car out for a spin in the countryside and somehow locking the keys in the trunk 20 miles away from civilization.

The only way to save face in this situation is, of course, to set fire to the car and try and collect the insurance.

Which is more or less what we ended up doing. King of Fools (verily, he knoweth his Dominion well) did a complete reinstall, with the added bonus of configuring the blog with the MySQL database, which works better with the host.

So now it's purring away in the garage. I'm too paranoid to drive it anywhere, though, let alone mess around with CSS or HTML templates. Maybe I'll hang some tinsel on it by Christmas (it's not too early for shopping!).

BTW, the address is here -- though there won't be much difference at least for the near future between my posts here, at Dodgeblogium or at The Blog Quebecois.

Also my thanks to Debbye of Being American In T.O. (or Tranna, as the locals call it) for blogrolling me. I've reciprocated the compliment.

Just like that, it snuck up on me.

My blogversary, that is. To be fair, this blog in this particular incarnation really didn't get started until about March/April of this year, but if you consult the archives (please don't) you will see that my very first entry is datestamped exactly 365 days, more or less, ago. So there.

It's not well known, but I'll let you in on a little blogging secret. On the occasion of your blogversary, upon providing a notarized bill-of-lading and your firstborn child, the Blogfather himself will with his own hands bake you a small cake, complete with candle, so that the blogosphere might properly celebrate.

Unfortunately he ships it USPS fourth-class, so when it arrives, it's not suited for much else but a hockey puck. Also, the candle is out.

Still, it's the thought that counts.

Dog of Flanders has coined (at least I assume it's his coinage -- I haven't seen it anywhere else, and I've read a fair bit on the topic) a useful neologism for Islamic terrorists: Islamikazes.

(Or ~kazis. Whichever spelling you prefer.)

Much tidier and more euphonious than the alternatives -- Islamofascists; suicide (or homicide) bombers; radical nutbars; Koranikovs (heh, I just made that one up myself), etc.

Islamikazes. Rolls off the tongue, it does.

I'm going to use it exclusively in the future, and if a few other people (which would describe my audience) follow suit . . . hey, we just might get it into the next revision of the OED.

Islamikazes. Write it on your hand, you'll never forget it.

UPDATE: I've since been informed by Dog of Flanders and others that the term was originated by Raphael Israeli, in a paper on the psychology of Islamist jihadis.

But I still intend to use it.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American friends.

Canadians don't really put the same emphasis on it. Ours is a month earlier (we don't have as much to be thankful for, I guess) and it's superficially the same, what with turkey and ham and potatoes and whatnot; but it's hardly the huge production that we see south of the border.

Canuck refugee Evan Kirchoff is similarly perplexed:

Eight years in, and I can't muster any reaction beyond "crap, the stores will be closed all day?" I think this is why I've made the mistake -- several times, mind you -- of attempting to drive out of the Bay Area on the Wednesday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend: I just cannot internalize the fact that every single sentient American is travelling from somewhere to somewhere else on that same afternoon. Surely last year was just a fluke: no, here we are stuck in an 8-hour traffic jam again!! What are the odds?l

It's hard to think of a Canadian equivalent. We do have Boxing Day after Christmas, which is some kind of British import, where you get to play slap 'n tickle with the maid or something. But seeing as most of us don't have maids, we just stay drunk for it.

Hey, I hope you all have a wonderful time.

I despise and abjure all awards. How dare they reduce artistic accomplishment to a . . . a popularity contest. It's an insult and a calumny . . . what's this?

Woo-hoo! Matthew Stinson 's nominated me for the Best Crawly Amphibian Blog
(the Crawly Amphibian refers to my [pitiful] Ecosystem ranking) in Wizbang's 2003 Weblog Awards! And my mother said I'd never amount to anything! In yer face, Ma!

Er, this is assuming I make the final cut. The nominations aren't closed yet in that category, and polling won't start until tomorrow.

So I am sure you're going to rush on over to Wizbang and vote for your favorite Crawly Amphibian blog, yes? the blog quebecois, yes?

No? You hold other Crawly Amphibian blogs before me?

Well then maybe you could do me a favor and instead drift on by and vote for Matthew, who's up for a well-deserved shot as Best New Blog of 2003. Matthew is sort of like me except that he seems to be a serious adult with grown-up ideas, boundless energy, and professional webpage smarts.

(Matthew: Sorry, man, it's the best I can do. It's like herding cats, given the legendary stubbornness of my readers.

How stubborn are they?

They are so stubborn that they return day after day to the blog quebecois, expecting something funny -- hell, something -- to happen.

(And as a practical matter, even if I could deliver them en bloc, the best possible impact would be the equivalent of Dennis Kucinich releasing his delegate(s) to the floor.

But hey.)

Erk. My bad. The Bad Sex award I pointed to a couple of days ago was to the 2002 winner. The proper 2003 award is here.

Of course, Bad Sex writing is truly timeless; so it shouldn't matter much in the larger scheme of things.

Also, my category is finally up at Wizbang. You can get to it here.

So far I've got two votes, which means that at least one person agrees with me. Since anyone can vote again each day until the 14th, I'm guarenteed 10 votes! Woo-hoo!

11 votes or bust!.

Blogging will be intermittent over the next couple of days. Something's (nothing critical, just time-consuming) come up and I need to attend to it.

In the meantime, you can entertain yourselves with this acrobatic jet display. Use your arrow keys to control.

(Via 2 Blowhards.)

Still busy, but not too busy to promote the inaugural Carnival of the Canucks.

It's a blogfest of moose, mosquitoes, and maple syrup.

Plus we exchange American dollars at the official rate.

This is the time of year when I present my best-of/worst-of lists; the biggest/most neglected news stories, etc., etc.

Except I forgot to write them up. And I'm on my way to a party, with no time to write them up.

To the bloggers out there who need some tips (especially, like me, on time-management), I recommend this piece by Dave Pollard. He makes a number of good points, many of which I intend to incorporate in my routine henceforth.

Happy New Year to all, and I hope it brings everyone prosperity and joy.

Grrr. It looks like I've been trapped into spending the evening on tech support for my brother-in-law, who deleted a .DLL file that he shouldn't have.

Worse, it's needed for IE or Netscape to work, so he can't get on the Internet to search for it; nor can I mail it to him.)

Fortunately he's got a friend nearby so he can try to get it that way. (He's about 600 miles away from here, so it's not like I can walk over with it.)

Sigh.

Gets file, puts it in correct directory. Nothing.

After 45 minutes of puzzling on this, I ask him to read me the description of the file.

Turns out it was a ZIP file. Does he have WinZip or equivalent? No.

So he's off to see his friend again. While I wait for the phone call to walk him through that, y'all might want to amuse yourselves by voting for our beloved former PM: (Via Jay Currie).

Its time for Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of 2003. Now I know that faced with the fatman, Michael Moore and France, Canada doesn't have a chance....but let's not forget our former PM's performance as Chirac's Bitch™. I think he should at least get into the run off. So, with less than 24 hours of voting to go the little guy from Shawinigan is stuck at 116 votes...I figure about 350 should push him over the top. Vote at Little Green Footballs and vote stategically. You have five votes. Plumping for Jean, that is voting five times in a row for him, while it may dislocate your sense of democratic decency, will bang him up to the top of the poll in no time. And, for all you bloggers out there, post a note and send more Canadian votes our guy's way.

Carnival of the Canucks #6 is up. I have no dog in this fight, but you might find some cute little puppy . . . where, exactly, am I going with this metaphor?

Andrew Coyne is moving on down.

While he gets his bandwidth problems with Rogers sorted out, he's opened up a Blogspot account, which you can get to here.

UPDATE: M. Coyne is now Master of His Domain.

My apologies for not posting. I've been plumbing.

It's not as glamorous as it looks in the movies.

You sleep soundly in your beds because there are hard men who will do violence to their knuckles to ensure that you have a place to pee tomorrow.

Next time, I hire one of those hard men.

My DSL connection has been abysmal the last couple of days, so communications might be sparse. (You don't want to hear what I'm saying right now, trust me.)

far off in sunlit places,
sad are the Scottish faces,
yearning to feel the kiss
of sweet Scottish rain.

-- trad.

We interrupt our (sort of) regular blogging to announce that there will be no blogging tonight.

Apart from this. Which doesn't count as a true blog entry. It's more like a Public Service Announcement.

Got a phone call from my sister. Their Internet connection is bollixed and my niece, Emily, needs some help with some research for a school project. Seems simple enough. She needs to know about the climate and vegetation of Scotland.

OK. I soon enough found a good page on the climate.

But vegetation? You'd think that somewhere on the Internet there'd be a nice little map that you could click on and the flora of Scotland would dance for you in full animated glory. You would be wrong.

The CIA Factbook, Wikipedia, the UN Food and Agriculture Office. The British Government, the Scottish Government.

Greenpeace.

Either nothing, or comingled with the total U.K. stats, or analyses of small woodlots attached to estates or -- the few botanical surveys that really looked useful -- in the JSTOR database, which you can't access without a university subscription.

So I had to harvest the few scraps I found here and there:

"Wot's this? 'The Medicinal Herbs of Scotland'? Inna the hopper wit ye, me lad!"

Two hours later I had assembled enough random data to, I think, salvage Emily's junior high academic career.

It wasn't a total waste of time. I did find a lot of really quite fascinating information, and if you'd like to know a bit more about it, well, look it up yourself.

Sheesh.

June 15, 2004

Like some men, and as was the practice in some families, my brothers and I did not hug my father a lot. As we got older in places like Montreal, or Kingston, or Dallas or Calgary, we also did not tell him that we loved him as much as we did. With our artist Mom, there was always a lot of affection, to be sure; but in the case of my Dad, usually all that was exchanged with his four boys was a simple handshake, when it was time for hello or goodbye. It was just the way we did things.

Warren Kinsella and I don't have a lot in common beyond a love for flatout rock and roll; but I remember an email he sent me when I was trying to get this stupid blog off the ground. He said something like: You're funny, please continue.

His Dad died a couple of days ago, and he was obviously a man Warren deeply loved. So let's call a ceasefire for five minutes or so and send our prayers to him and his family.

a lone, a lone, a lone, a lone wolf
a lone, a lone, a lone, a lone wolf
a lone, a lone, a lone, a lone wolf

corey hart

Arooooo!

That's by way of introduction. I'm a bit of a "lone wolf," so I like to say Arooooo! a lot. 'Cause that's what a lone wolf does.

When I say Arooooo! at social events, people smile nervously and back away slowly, leaving me with my vodka-and-tonic. This is good, because you don't want to get between a lone wolf and his vodka-and-tonic. Arooooo!

A lone wolf doesn't join things, like the local Shriners' club. 'Cause if he did, he wouldn't be a lone wolf anymore. He'd be a Shriner. I'm sure that that's a worthy organization, but I just wouldn't feel right saying Arooooo! at meetings. And if they don't serve vodka-and-tonics, it would be at best a pitiful, sad-doggie Arooooo!.

So I was surprised to get an email from Stephen Taylor a day or two ago, asking if I'd like to join the Blogging Tories. I had thought that it was reserved for card-carrying Conservatives who wrote about, like, politics and stuff.

I'm not a CPC member, though I do support the party in general. As to politics, this blog, believe it or not, started out as a political site. That was before I discovered that I really kinda sorta hate writing about politics. I'm also usually at least 24 hours behind the newscycle, too, so anyone coming here expecting a minute-by-minute account of the FLQ crisis (I've been meaning to get to it Any Day Now) is going to be disappointed.

Bearing all that in mind, I signed up (the blogroll is on the left, down the page). To all my new friends at the Blogging Tories -- welcome, and I hope you find the blog entertaining, if not precisely what you expected.

Arooooo!

NealeNews has this up on his site:

......EXCLUSIVE..............

Nealenews has learned that Heritage Canada has been planning Brian Mulroney’s state funeral for the last couple weeks and expects him to “pass away any day now.” Although I have been unable to confirm this information with Heritage Canada, it does come from an employee within the department.

Brian Neale
Nealenews
06/22

Update: Nothing on CBC or Bourque as of now.

Ditto for CP, CTV, and Global/Canada.com

I'm certain that these organizations are aware of this by now and are checking it out, but there probably won't be much more on it until tomorrow. I first saw the Nealenews piece on Truth Laid Bear's aggregator (it's since scrolled off) at around 9:40pm or so, and I doubt that there's anyone in Ottawa ready to speak on or off the record.

June23 Up-update: Bourque has this (no link, but it's at the top of the page): "Better: Ex-PM Mulroney to be discharged as early as next week ...

Time will tell, I guess. Or maybe Newsweek.

One of the downsides to being a wildly successful blogger is that many people are after you to promote their causes, figuring that your fame will bring much attention to their projects.

Or so I've heard. It must be very annoying.

I did get an email yesterday from one Susan Coulton asking me to endorse this:

‘Unite Against Terror’ Statement

Invitation to bloggers to sign and Sign and link

Please consider signing and informing your readers about the statement ‘Unite Against Terror’.

Written by bloggers in the UK after 7/7 posted on Friday it has attracted hundreds of signatories from UK USA Europe Iraq and the Middle East.

Terrorist attacks against Londoners on July 7th killed at least 54 people. The suicide bombers who struck in Netanya Israel on July 12 ended five lives including two 16 year old girls. And on July 13 in Iraq suicide bombers slaughtered 24 children. We stand in solidarity with all these strangers hand holding hand from London to Netanya to Baghdad: communities united against terror.

. . .

We invite you to sign this statement as a small first step to building a global movement of citizens against terrorism.

Initial signatories include:

Alan Johnson (Labour Friends of Iraq personal capacity) Ali Fadhil (Iraq); Adele Geras (author); Peter Tatchell; Jane Ashworth (Labour Friends of Iraq pesonal capaciity); Anthony Julius; Alex Gordon (UK National Union of Rail Maritime & Transport Workers RMT - personal capacity); Omar (Iraq the Model Iraq Pro-Democracy Party); Professor Norman Geras (normblog); Dr. Elizabeth Stewart (The Open University England); Jeff Weintraub (USA); Cllr David Boothroyd (Westminster City Council UK); Syed W Ahmed (Islamic Center of Chicago); Ami Isseroff (Israel MidEastWeb for Coexistence); David Green (Oxford University Labour Club and Delyn Constituency Labour Party; Micheline Ishay (Director International Human Rights Program University of Denver personal capacity);Osama Al-Moosawi (Iraq); Shalom Lappin (King's College London UK) Brian Brivati (Professor of Modern History Kingston University London personal capacity); Pierre-André Taguieff (France CNRS Research Director); Cynthia Epstein (graduate center CUNY USA); Christopher Hitchens; Eric Lee; Stephen Bronner; Adrian Cohen and hundreds of others.

Well, I have my doubts about the efficacy of signing petitions against terror -- but if Christopher Hitchens and Norm Geras are willing to sign it, then so am I. Or at least my pseudonym is.

I'm not sure what the jihadi will make of it.

"This 'gnotalex' . . . maybe . . . he is you, Ahmed!"

"No, maybe he is . . . you, Osama!" (Gunfire ensues.)

Yeah, we'll go with that theory.

If you want to sign the petition, or to find out more about it, here's the webpage.

Computer problems. Back soon. I think.

OMG! OMG! 2 sw33t 2 b tru! LOL!

Um, that was by way of introducing my first graphical ad, from IMVU, an instant messenging service. Scroll down and you'll see it on the left. I don't care if you're not into instant messenging (is that a real word?). Go to their site and purchase their fine products. That is all.

People, people: Please, please observe basic fingernail hygiene. Just the last night I miscut my ring finger on my right hand and I was afflicted with the dreaded "hangnail of death" while I attempted to bring sweet, sweet lovin' to Jessica Alba. Or maybe my pillow. It was such a blur of emotion that I'm not certain exactly what happened.

Ahem. On the odd chance that you're still reading this: Let me save you some dollars and trouble. As you get older and wiser, you will perhaps notice that your toenails have become a calcified mess. I was hoping for talons, but this is what I got.

A pair of "sidecutters" -- (if you don't know the term, consult with any local mechanic or electrician) that you can pick up at Home Depot or Wal-Mart or wherever for $5-10.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

I would recommend full eye protection. Those snip, snip, snips, do tend to fly.

I'm pulling the trigger on this fine blog, probably today or tomorrow. (For those not sure what I'm talking about, I addressed it in this post.)

I've got a few things to catch up on and my birthday is coming up so I don't think I'll be able to get started on the new blog before all that.

If I'm not back by this time next week, though, notify the Ski Patrol. I'll be the guy stuck in a snowbank, waving his feet.

OK, we've kissed and made up, and I remain a loyal member of the Blogging Tories.
Stephen Taylor has figured out a way to draw a feed from this site whenever I class a post as political in nature. So now I can wax poetic about whatever I like without clogging up the BT aggregator -- at the same time, it encourages me to include more political content. Each post that appears there doubles or triples my usual traffic.

Oh, and someone go tell McClelland to wipe the smirk off his face. It might freeze like that, which would be unfortunate. He's not a handsome man to begin with.

Wall Street Journal Online:

. . . bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.

Eh, not really. I've got a number of things to do over the next week or so, so blogging will be (more) sporadic. I'm finishing up a longer piece that I hope will be ready by Wednesday, but expect the wheels to fall off after that.