So yeah, the wedding ...

... it was a good wedding.

Apart from the incident with the hair stylist.

And the fact that it rained.

Which didn't do a whole pile for my hair either.

We got up at 5.45am and got our shit together and Himself went to get Dukie our Yugoslavian friend and pig roaster, and I tore the house apart and put it back together again so it would accommodate forty people.

My nearly husband and I bumped into each other again about 8.45am as I was going to the hairdressers with the Queen Mother and Tina my MOH and he was drilling holes in the timber frame we had built to cover the pig roast because the forecast was for rain and it had already started and he needed to get the tarp. up.

So he was wet at that stage. But I was still in bride mode and had a jacket on.

Status to date: no food.

At the beauty salon, the door of which I will never darken again in my life even though it is the nearest Aveda spa to me (Pure Energy, Cole Harbour, if you're interested), I got my nails done by a girl who talked about her immigrant boyfriend who couldn't get a visa and what did I think.

Well, I thought it was my wedding day so could we talk about that please, but I didn't say it of course because I am Canadian now, so I did the spiel. Yadda yadda do this don't do that call your MP don't call too often I think you missed a finger there love....

Then I got my hair done.

I should've gotten Gabriel to do my hair. But I just couldn't afford to. Either the time or the money. So I went the cheap/ fast route.


Stupid wench that I am.

Anyways two hours later, Tina my MOH's hair had been immaculately curled and then put in a ballerina bun, the QM had had a blow dry she could've done herself, and I looked like EmmyLou on a bad day in 1976.

Finally we got out of the place and got back in the car (in the rain) and I undid my hair.

I cannot begin to describe how FUCKED OFF I was. I'm a girl who likes a good hairdo.

Suffice it to say that I described the incident in work a few days later, and when I mimed the bit where I tore my hair out of the ridiculous clip she had it in, I actually tore a handful of my hair out.

I could have spent two hours in bed. I could have spent the money on starving children in Africa.

That kind of pissed off.

Status. Still no food and no coffee for two hours.

Back at the house, it was pouring, just pouring, and the pig was being turned on the spit by the first of a number of volunteers who are the real heroes of our wedding day. But it was looking a little pale for 11.20am.

I mentioned the paleness.

Ready at 5.

Supposed to be ready at 3.

Hyperventilation ensued.

The MOH gave me the second of many lectures on how it was my day and I wasn't to worry.

It's not my day. It's never the bride's day. It's everyone else's day. When are we going to just say it like it is.

Did I mention the pig was turned by hand?

The squeaking sounded like a mediaeval instrument of torture.

It was relentless. For six hours. Christ, I could've spent the hairdressing money on an automatic spit!

Although, in hindsight, I really like the fact that the entire day had a sound track reminiscent of a 60s B-movie about Torquemanda.

I bumped into my nearly husband again. He was soaked to the skin.

Have you eaten? no. Eat. I haven't got time. EAT!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I got back into organizational mode I realised the liquor was in the shed and had to be moved to the house and the pig needed all the men in the house to focus on it (of course), so Kathlene who is my guardian angel forever and I moved the booze and that was the absolute end of my hair.

Time to eat. I did. Not Himself.

Then upstairs to dress.

I was wearing a backless dress.

Could I find the expensive boob things I bought to give me a bit of a lift?

CIF!

Could I find the pashmina I spent a fortune on because it matched the underlying gold in the dress so perfectly?

CIF!

It's 1.30, the house is full of people, thirty minutes before I plighted my troth to my beloved forever I'm wandering around upstairs in my knickers looking for my lifters and someone to iron my dress.

The QM was downstairs being the hostess.

The MOH was downstairs writing the best man's speech.

Kathlene was on the phone to her fiancee trying to organize a lift for Dukie's wife who was home baking bread for the wedding party.

It's not about the bride, it's about everyone else.

I screeched for help!

My beloved happened along, soaked to the skin and still fasting from the night before, trying to find somewhere to have a shower and change, grasped the seriousness of the situation and proceeded to try to iron my dress for me.

With his eyes closed so he couldn't see it.

This is why I married him, readers.

A few minutes later, Kathlene and the QM made it upstairs and did it properly.

My mother looked so beautiful it made me want to cry.

She popped the dress over my head and I slapped on a bit of make-up and I was ready to go.

Fay, one of the servers the PFW hired to save me from a meltdown came up with a glass of wine and made me neck it.

The Queen Dad came upstairs and gave me a hug that said goodbye and good luck and all that stuff, and that was it.

I cried, readers.

I cried in the bedroom.

I cried going downstairs.

I cried during the opening ceremony.

I cried when Swampy read his piece. And added in his own comments about vehement independence.

I cried when Elizabeth the JP told us to look at each other and Himself was staring in the distance worrying about the pig and I had to poke him with my elbow and say 'focus, dude' and everyone fell around laughing.

I cried during the vows.

I cried during the exchange of rings.

I cried while I signed the papers.

I cried when Noel read He wishes for the heaven's embroidered cloths

My voice wobbled the whole way through and Himself's was clear as a bell. And I'm the professional communicator. Which was vaguely irritating.

And all the while in the background was the 'eeetch, eeeetch, eeetch' of the pig spit.

And then Elizabeth said it was done and we were married to each other.

But not forever. Because it's Canada and they don't make outrageous commitments.

But as everyone there said, it is of course forever.

Lucky I do love a good cry. It was great. I loved getting married.

Then it was over and time to mingle and make sure everyone got fed.

It was a blur.

An hour into it, there was two bottles of red wine left and the Queen Dad had to reassure me that it was all going to be okay and there was enough white and beer left.

The servers started getting anxious to me about the food.

It's not the bride's day. It's everyone else's day.

It was 3.15, the appetisers were well gone and everyone was getting a little peckish, so I went out to Dukie on the off-chance that 5pm was the outside forecast.

Nope.

5pm.

Maybe.

Luckily, we had bought a turkey boiler so we did a turkey in twenty minutes.

It involves twelve litres of burning peanut oil, so a turkey boil is a guy thing.

After fifteen minutes Fay started hopping up and down, so I trundled out to the shed in the rain in my velvet Simon Chang ball gown.

We figured it was ready.

The guys brought it in and proudly presented it to Fay and the Queen Mother.

It's not done.

Yes it is.

No it's not.

The guys looked at me.

It's my mother and Fay, dudes, put it back in the boiler.

Fifteen minutes later they pronounced it done and we had food.

Twenty five minutes later we had no food left.

Apart from the pig.

The pig became the main focus of the day.

It's not about the bride, it's about the pig.

The wedding separated into two groups - the pig-roasters, and the people watching the pig-roasters.

It was generally felt that the pig-roasters deserved their own tv show.

During a lull in the tv show, we decided to cut the cake.

Mostly because I was sick of wandering around in the rain in a velvet ball gown and I wanted to be like my husband who had already put his jeans back on.

The Queen Dad made me cry again, with his beautiful speech.

Himself gave all kinds of hostages to fortune with his adamant promises that he would look after me forever.

I was sitting there thinking... .mostly I look after myself dudes, but whatever...

Then I went upstairs and put my jeans on and suddenly I felt like it was my party and I could relax.

Time passed.

The pig was roasted, Gordie who had a previous career in the meat industry took out the sharpest knife I've ever seen in a domestic situation, butchered a 55lb pig in fifteen minutes and everyone dug in.

Shannon the husky positioned herself under the deck and looked extraordinarily hungry and did very well I thought.

There was one small plate of pig left for the day after.

Thankfully we don't have 'afters' here.

We lit a bonfire and sat in its glow and enjoyed the conversation.

The neighbours came round, better late than never and some late guests turned up and replaced the early leavers.

It was a great wedding.

I think next time I do a pig roast for forty, I'll do it in August.

Postscript.

I forgot the absolute best part of the day. The music, which we'd argued over for months, it being the most important part of the day for us, didn't work during the ceremony, because I had forgotten to tune in the speakers.

This was something that Littl'Un knew that we missed. Him being thirteen and knowing all about how important music is to an event.

Also, he'd been around for most of the arguing.

So when everyone was gone, and it was just family again and everything and everyone that matters to me was together in the one place for one beautiful moment in my life, he lit some candles and arranged them around the sitting room and turned off all the lights, and set up the playlist, and the three of us slow danced to our wedding music.

Snowpatrol: Crashing Cars
Kathleen Edwards: Sure as Shit
The Waterboys: Fisherman's Blues

Thanks Little'Un. Guess now you're thirteen I'll have to negotiate a new name for you.

The day before the day the gate opens

So tomorrow is Hallowe'en.

First one in the forever house.

Hopefully, tomorrow I'll get to hand out treats to a generation of kids that we will watch grow up. There are a lot of kids in our area, and they're mostly very small yet, so we will have at least twelve years of them before they grow up and leave.

I say I because I'm home alone again, Himself is in New Brunswick decontaminating a pulp mill or some equally necessary but truly gross activity. I am never quite sure.

It's kind of annoying because we had a date for Hallowe'en.

We don't have many dates.

Also, I've pointed out that we are going on our honeymoon in seven days so to make sure to come home before next Friday to get a ride to the airport.

Several times.

It's not that I think he'll forget, he's as excited about our first 'doing nothing' vacation in four years as I am. (As opposed to Ireland/ camping which are 'doing too much' vacations).

I just feel that pointing it out twice a day on the phone while they're all listening makes it easier for him to stand up to the company if/ when they decide he needs to stay in NB.

"She'll kill all of us."

They all know me.

So it works.

My codename is Grumpy, apparently.

Which is good.

Better than Pushover, anyways.

So tonight is three nights before the full moon. The moon is bright and the sky is clear. The temperature dropped twelve degrees when the sun went down and the omens are good for the gates opening tomorrow night.

We shall find out if the house is haunted.

We..

I mean me..

Whoooooooo...

On acquairing a Consort

Queenie has a Consort.

It's Himself of course.

He was always her Consort, even before she knew him, but it's official now.

Elizabeth the JP sent the paperwork in.

We wrote our own vows and neither of us said 'till death us do part', I am not sure why.

Too much like tempting Fate I suppose.

Tonight, though, I am Consortless, Himselfless, as He has gone to the island to visit his parents.

Shannon the Husky has gone for a little wander in the woods by herself (because she is a big girl now), and so for the first time in about three months, I am the only being in the house on a Saturday night.

The only other thing using oxygen is a candle.

I have a glass of wine on the go.

The Radio 2 jazz show is on in the background (although I haven't heard any actual jazz yet), and the only other sound is the odd POP as the pickle jars seal themselves.

Zucchini pickle, chow chow, pickled beets.

Only two more batches to do, but I have run out of jars.

I am still trying to come to terms with being married.

I was trying to work it out today while the dentist wrestled with my inability to feel no pain while he drilled. And again while I was pickling (they should make pickling mandatory in prisons, it is the most soothing occupation in the world, you figure everything out while you're watching your beets simmer).

I always thought I would be the Elizabeth 1 of the Queenie world.

There are some advantages to being married though.

When somebody tried to talk me into spending $100 an hour on getting Shannon to be better behaved, I said I'd have to talk to my husband about it and they backed right off.

Then I told my husband to get a rolled up newspaper and smack Shannon on her pert little ass for chewing on my arm.

Unfortunately, it all went Pete Tong at that point, because my husband pointed out that he was already the Alpha in the house, so I would have to do the smacking if I wanted to achieve the deputy Alpha position.

I can't smack my dog without intense trauma on both sides. Himself waves a newspaper at her and gets instant model dog behaviour.

When I do that, she tries to chew the newspaper.

I smacked her once with a paper on her ass, when she shat in my brand new shoe while I was telling her not to, and it was so traumatic for the pair of us we have not gone back there again.

In any sense of the word.

Is there anything more mortifying than being ignored by a being who depends on you because YOU FAILED HER EMOTIONALLY?

I'd be a terrible mother....

I figure she'll just stop doing all the annoying things eventually. Thereby saving me hundreds of dollars in dog whispering fees.

Also, she's going to Chris at the kennels for a fortnight soon.

Chris takes no shit from any dog and yet they all adore her.

So Chris'll put manners on her and then she'll be so happy to see me when she gets home, she'll be good.

Kinda like me after I got out of Colaiste na Leanai, or 'the prison camp in Ring' as we called it.

Last Days of Summer on the Eastern Shore

Tonight is the last night of summer here in Nova Scotia. It has been a beautiful seven weeks or so (July was a wet, foggy write-off) and today was no exception, 22 degrees in the afternoon and yet another beautiful starry, windless, still night tonight.

There are only two downsides to a windless night here on the Eastern Shore. You can't hear the surf roaring against the beach. Which is why we live out here.

And the mosquitoes have free rein.

Yes we still have mossies. On 21st September. I think I will enter ours in the mossie equivalent of the round the world race, they are that hardcore. They have to leave soon, btw, I hope they realise this.

Last weekend was the Eastern Shore yard sale extravanganza. It didn't stretch up the shore as far as I thought it would; when we hit Musquodoboit Harbour there were no sales, but the road from Gaetz Brook to Lawrencetown was pretty good.

We spent sixty dollars. We got:

- a pair of barely used Rossignol cross country skis and poles for me
- a brown leather handbag for me
- a hand-tooled leather tool belt for Himself
- Bill Clinton's My Life
- Dog training for Dummies (which include sad people who own huskies that are totally spoilt and think they are the alpha of the pack)
- an enormous box of camping equipment including a stylish kettle, numerous plates, cups, bowls, one of those plastic egg holding devices, an egg poacher, two saucepans, etc etc
- and a framing nailer (which is well hardcore I am told)

Not a bad little haul.

Last yard sale of the year...

Then we went home and painted the deck and the steps to the deck, and the other steps, and the steps up to the front door, and I hid the disaster of a side garden that I started deconstructing and got bored with, and cut down rag weed and trimmed bushes and we ignored the flower garden which needs to be sorted out (the Queen Mother has tonight stepped up to the plate on this one)

And hung the new curtains and the framed pictures we had sitting in the spare room for seven months.

And started cleaning the house.

So busy, you say....

We are getting married in the house soon.

Thanksgiving weekend to be exact.

So it has to be clean.

The house, I mean.

Normally it is tidy. Tidy is not clean, but it is enough for me as I am immune to my germs, Himself's germs and now Shannon's germs. But there will be foreigners and children and older people at this event, so clean is necessary.

That's a lot of cleaning, though.... And as I talked with the Queen Mother on the phone this evening, while watching the beautiful glow of the sunset light on the 'beginning to turn' trees and while realising I live in a wonderful house and how lucky I am (yet again), I also noticed that the dog has licked all the windows in a not even pattern, up to a height of about two feet so they will have to be cleaned too.

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No I am not stressed. I did the stress and told everyone but nobody felt it was special, so I gave it up because it was giving me indigestion with no positive outcomes! Also I decided against a hen party, which relieved me of all my stress immediately.

Really, I am not stressed. I am very happy and excited and looking forward to our beautiful day and if we have invited too many people and they all turn up and it rains and there is no room in the house, well then we will all just have to pile into the basement to party, and hey, it won't matter if anyone drops their plate of roasted pork down there.

We are having a pig roast.

Our friend Dukie is organizing it.

And Elizabeth is marrying us. And there will be music on the iPod. And maybe a few carved pumpkins.

And then we will be married.

How about that!!

And then it will be back to routine, which now includes puppy school.

I already hate puppy school.

I have been to one class.

But that's a whole other post.

Which may come tomorrow, as I had quite the chunk of the top of my big toe (left) cut off today as I cut it in a bizarre argument with a door frame, then didn't look after it, then went camping in the woods with it, then yadda yadda, so it was 'gone septic' and needed to be removed. So what with the antibiotics and the anaesthetic and the glass of wine to give them a little edge, and the pain and the blood that won't stop and the need for copious amounts of epsom salts and polysporin and clean gauze, I may have to keep my toe home tomorrow for a little rest.

I would prefer not to have to wear flip flops to my autumn country wedding. It would remind me too much of the fact that I was supposed to wear flip flops to my Carribbean beach wedding.

Maybe I'll just wear my comfy slippers.

Much love to all the sick puppies/ kittens/ cats in Laytown and other places!!

Critter attack at 1am

In true Canadian fashion, at 1am this morning I was standing in my peejays throwing garden furniture at a raccoon on my deck that wanted to get in the crate to eat my puppy, or at least give her rabies.

The raccoon ignored the garden furniture so eventually I had to sidle up to it and beat it off the deck with a broom. Which took a while. Then I took a completely frazzled dog out of the crate and had to let her pee all over the deck to reassert her dominance. Which also took a while.

And then I had to clean all the critter waste off the deck.

Did I mention that it was 1am while I was doing this?

Goddamn critters.

Break in the Indian summer

It rained last night and this morning.

I nearly didn't remember what it was, this mysterious water falling from the sky, but I'm not so formerly Irish that I didn't figure it out eventually.

It has been a pretty good four weeks weather-wise.

And a good six weeks company-wise.

Haven't posted for a while, but then a hot happening August is something to be lived rather than written about.



Also, puppies take up a lot of time. So no blogging time. Or putting on make-up in the morning time. Or lying on the couch in the evening time. Or faffing around reading other blogs time. Or putting up photos time. Or all the dozens of little things I spent my evenings doing, like the one acre garden (now jungle) I have.

No me time in other words.

Christ, at this rate, I could've had a kid and gotten some presents at least ....

Yes I know having a kid is more time in the long term... it just feels like all the time right now.

Myself and my neighbour commiserate each other daily, as we are haulin' one puppy away from the other in either garden.



Having being begged and begged and begged and promised and promised etc for a puppy by men and kids, they're off doing manly things and we are the sole proprietor of the chewy, poopy little flght risks for the foreseeable.

It's like having a baby in the house she says.

And she should know, with two young boys.

Her puppy is a Bassett Hound called Simon who arrived on our street the day before Shannon.



Simon's ears are longer than his legs but he can still haul ass down the street faster than either of us.



As for Shannon, well, Shannon's a Husky, born to run. And like the airport she appears to be named after, she's always taking off. And I always know when she's about to do it, because I get 'the look'.

Some people reading this now will laugh that the girl with THE LOOK is now, finally gettin' some karma from her dogma.



The photo above encapsulates the look, as explained by a friend who also owns a husky. It says 'hmmm, I'm thinking about running away now, and I'm looking behind at you to make sure you know, because I don't care if you do, because we both know I can run faster than you. And even though I recognise my name when there's a treat bag in your hand, I would prefer to run than have a treat right now, so um.. ahm.. I forget my name (lalalalalaa, can't hear you ca-a-a-lllin' me...).... until you catch me of course .... get ready, sucker.'

Having said that, it's a lot of fun too.

And she won't break out of the house to go into town to meet boys with cider bottles and then fall on her face drunk and get brought home by the cops when she's sixteen.

She'll be old and incontinent and farty instead.

Haulin' ass involves ignoring the puppy rules

Worked from home today - beginning of a long weekend - in the hope that four straight days home will bring some order to the chaos.

I have a 'daily routine for puppy' that someone gave me. It involves bringing puppy outside for a pee 13 times a day.

This puppy's puppy likes to take about 20 minutes to decide if/when/where the deed will be done.

So 13 x 20 = 260 minutes = 4 hours 20 minutes = I don't friggin' think so.

Plus two x one hour walks = 6 hours 20 minutes.

Which is the total time I have in the day when I'm not sleeping or working or commuting.

This is my problem. Trying to follow the correct raising of a puppy rules.

The correct raising of a puppy rules are for people who have time to follow them.

Like many people who have dogs I have to go to work (or work from home) plus run the house plus do the shopping plus spend time on FaceBook plus sleep plus eat plus converse with lovedd ones plus plus plus.

Himself has had to work 13 hour shifts all week including an all-nighter tonight and on Sunday night, so he hasn't been able to help.

How do other people do the 'daily puppy routine'?

Me, I've decided puppy's daily routine is whatever the hell Queenie decides it is.

And she better learn to pee around it.

So there.

Ass-hauling has begun.

Now.... ignoring dirty house.... can someone give me a manual for that that I can tear up and scatter around the slightly chewed acacia wood coffee table?

Murakami's well, Queenie not so much

What do you do when you can feel your fingernails slipping and you yourself sliding headfirst down Murakami's well, even though there is no earthly reason for it to happen right now because, according to everyone, you have reached the personal nirvana for which you have strived for so long?

Do you give in to the pull and let yourself slide down a little bit? Making it that bit harder to get up.

Do you haul yourself out again? Knowing the struggle that entails.

Do you ask someone to pull you out? Who can ask that of someone else?

Chemicals don't work.

I guess it's time to start haulin' ass.

Shannon arrives at Eagle Drive

Hi, I'm Shannon and I've come here to live in East Lawrencetown with Queenie and Himself. I am nine weeks old, but I am a big girl already. I have David Bowie eyes and a wolf face but I am a sweetie really.

So far, I've jumped in and out of the mud hole lots of times and chased the cat from next door, and gone to the beach and tried to eat all the seaweed there and the foam, and chewed the deck and Little 'Un's jacket and some other stuff.

I like blueberry pancakes. And digging in Himself's vegetable patch. And peeing in the flower garden. I don't like the bristle brush on the barbeque much though, I tried to chew it and the bristles pricked my mouth, so I barked at it.

It's hot today, so I'm gonna go lie in the shade a little.

Is my secret Knuckelrock shame really shameful? Or should I give myself up to Twitter?

While playing my nine new iTunes songs, the iTunes made me listen to Nickelback's If today was your last day?

Although I note there isn't a question mark in the song title.

Which kinda sums it all up for me.

I am the kind of person who thinks that you should put a friggin' question mark at the end of a question.

Therefore, Nickelback OFFENDS ME.

Because they are the worst kind of kock rock.

I am a girl who knows her Killers from her Kings of Leon; her Cary Brothers from her Kathleen; her K'naan from her Kaos.

But still, when I listen to a Nickelback song, my body escapes from me and sort of twists around like a teenager at his first disco.

Which further OFFENDS ME.

Because I am being marketed.

And I friggin' hate being marketed.

On a sidebar, I also noticed that the song is edging towards that christian rock crap that's going on in Canada right now, a Nickelback finds god kinda thing which I was really hoping NB would ignore.... but no... they've crunched the numbers and moved slightly to the righteous.

But anyways, I have a secret Nickelback shame. Which I can indulge because I am pledged to a man who thinks NB is great. And ToaD. Which is also a secret shame of mine - Santa Monica being the Chocolate Lake anthem of course.

And 3 Doors Down.

But I really hate 3DD.

And Snow Patrol.

Retch...

So here's the rub.

I have a Twitter account.

I would die rather than tweet @Queenie_NS Nickelback playing while Queenie blogs her latest intellectual thoughts.

Why?

Because Twitter is a haiku-type format. That calls for irony or outrage or one of the other pithy emotions.

And NB is a personal, unexplainable vice that needs context in order to set up the necessary irony.

Which is not possible in a haiku.

Well not for my brain anyway.... submissions welcome btw....

I'm reading a great book at the moment, about the social history of Europe from 1648 - 1815.

It's so heavy I have to steal one of Himself's pillows to prop it up to read in bed.

The chapter I read last night was about manufacturing, and it extolled the invention of the cotton ginny/ jenny as the pivotal moment in wealth creation.

I can understand something like that.

Holy fuck... Mozart's Requiem just ended and faded into Nickelback. Waaagh!! Although nice to see iTunes is still as ironic as ever.

Apart from the fact that this fact was beaten into me in school by Jim Loftus (figuratively beaten of course), it's obvious. It created cheap clothes. It increased the role of the state in the affairs of the individual because manufacturers needed workers. It created opportunities for home-based work, which helped break not only the power of some of the guilds (thus unleashing innovation), but the concept of serfdom and the seigneur, and consequently helped ease the plight of European peasants.

Of course when you think about it, as Jim Loftus made us do back in the eighties, it was the reason for the huge spike in slave traffic as well.

So, it changed the way the world operated. It improved things for some poor people and disimproved things for others and ruined the lives of still others completely.

Nowadays, people talk about social media like it's the new cotton jinny.

I wish someone would write a book and explain why being able to talk to everyone all the time on a number of platforms is good for me. And bad for others. And devastating for another group.

Or vice versa.

Or just recommend the book if it's already written.

So I won't feel like I'm being marketed.

Which I have felt since 2001.

I suppose this is how you feel when you are living through a seismic shift in something or other.

I guess I better just live every day like it's my last... like a good littel knuckeldragger!

Should we move to Halifax II

Well, not right now because it's raining again.

That's because it's a summer Friday.

It's a summer Friday.

So we gotta rain down on all the poor plebs, who went to the liquor store, just in case it was warm enough to sit on the deck and enjoy a cold one.

You can sit on the deck tonight and enjoy a cold one.

Drip-drip-dripping down the back of your neck.

So I am inside.

Alone.

With a glass of wine.

First one all week.

I had an intense urge to hear Once in a Lifetime, by Talking Heads, so I just popped onto iTunes and bought it.

And some Alabama 3, and some K'naan, and some Cary Brothers, and some Mozart.

And you may ask yourself.... how did I get here?

And then some Nickelback, so I won't feel too guilty.

I won't tell Himself about the Nickelback until tomorrow but.

Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.

A wet Friday in July.

Come to Halifax for the weather.

I did.

People here literally fall around laughing when I tell them that.

They think it's one of my 'Irish jokes'.

The absurdist tinge to my humour which comes from being Irish is not really gotten here, but it is tolerated, which is as much as I can hope for.

But it is actually true.

The summer I came here, I was backpacking, I worked outside on a farm all summer, I met the love of my life, and therefore, the sun shone everyday.

So I figured it would always be like this.

Of course it still shines in my heart every day here.... aaah....

Letting the days go by...

Wow, I had forgotten about the crappy muddled ending to that song!

But yeah... to return to my point... despite the wonderfulness of the finding of the soulmate and soulcountry, the weather turned out to be the same as it ever was.

So don't move here for the weather.

Is my point I think.

Like I did.

So should we move to Halifax Canada?

Interesting question.

It was in a comment I got the other day.

I don't know. I don't even live in Halifax anymore, I live thirty kilometres from the bridge across the harbour to the city. And I commute in and out every day. Twenty minute drive, then thirty minute bus journey. Longer in the winter.

But I did live there for over three years.

I suppose it depends on where you're starting from.

I mean, if you live in Victoria, BC, then I would imagine you are swapping one city for another similar city, minus the balmy climate.

Why do people move anywhere anyways?

I moved because I was bored and despairing with a 463 square foot apartment in a complex that had a sign stating that children should not play on the grass. It was looking like that was the pinnacle of my existence and there was a little voice inside me that said somewhere there's a house with a nice guy and a dog and a garden just waiting for me to find it.

Which reminds me... why is the dog guy not emailing me back?? We want the puppy NOW!!

But Halifax was a sort of random end point. It could have been somewhere else. It just happened that the job turned up, and then the little yellow house found me, and then the guy moved in, and then his job turned up, and then the credit union got on board, and finally the house that we bought emerged out of the mess of For Sale signs we were sifting through.

Still waiting on the D-O-O-O-O-G!!

At the same time, there isn't anything I particularly dislike about Halifax.

Apart from the mayor.

Someday in about six years I will get my citizenship and then he'd better watch the hell out if he's still mayor.

Well, there are a few things I dislike:

- the wind tunnel downtown caused by the high-rise development on the waterfront
- the tumbleweed zone that is Barrington St. which is mostly owned by one guy who papers over shop fronts with Starfish Properties logos while he waits for ... what? A mayor who will let him knock it all down and build more high-rises?

If you can't get this one to do it... you'll be waiting Mr. Resnick, or whatever your name is.

All the great stores I hung out in when I moved here are gone - Sam the Record Man, Ginger's Bar, Dooley's pool hall are closed, the craft gallery is off down the waterfront somewhere I can't find. The pawn shop is gone, the little clothes place beside it. I knew the staff in all those stores; before I had any friends here, I talked to them most days.

Before you know it, John Doull will cave to Starfish, the bookshop will be gone, and that will be the end of a beautiful little street.

I will be forced to shop at the Mic Mac Mall like everyone else. I may consider another province when that happens.

SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED, MR. MAYOR!!

Other things:
- floatables, obviously
- the crappy bus system, which means I have to drive anytime I want to go slightly off-track
- the half hour lunch break. I mean, why can't we have an hour, like a normal city? We have fantastic restaurants here, we should have French eating hours, so they can make money and I can digest.

The fact that lunchtime is announced with a cannon roar every day rocks though.

The city itself is beautiful, a ramshackle pile of old and new all huddled up against the hills sheltering from the wind and the rain. Nice parks. Nice residential areas. Lots of room.

NO TRAFFIC.

Like I said, it depends on where you're coming from... if you're coming from Kennetcook well yes the traffic is terrible. But I came from Dublin, where the traffic IS terrible.

Quirky shops and did I mention the great restaurants?

Anyhoo, have to go watch Breaking Bad episode 4 with Himself and eat strawberry and rhubarb pie. More about this anon....

The summer is not living up to my expectations

I am getting the teensiest bit annoyed with my summer so far. We've had the occasional spell of good weather, but mostly it's been rain on the weekend, followed by cloud, then glorious sun just at the point of the week where I am stuck into a piece of work and can't take a lunch break, followed by a glorious Friday evening drive home to the barbeque, whereupon the clouds descend for another two days of rain.

Which is making our mosquitoes legion. And legendary in size.

And of course no camping. Because if I wanted to go camping in the rain, I would have stayed in Ireland and bought a tent there.

Although all our vegetables are growing away like there's no problem with the clouds, my carefully planted humming-bird attracting flowers are mouldering away in pots on the deck.

No humming birds this year I guess.

My photography sessions have been non-existent this year so far, as I cannot be assed taking more pictures of the fog around the lake.

And now my laptop is starting to die.

My laptop is well over five years old of course, and in computer years that's about 120, so it is entitled to be a little cranky and slow.

But I don't want to spend money on a new laptop right now.

Because I am Fear of deh Credit Card Bill Girl.

Dear weather gods, make something nice and bright and extended happen soon, please.

Despite using the word extraordinary too much, Queenie is pleased

Something extraordinary happened to me today.

I only use the word extraordinary because on reflection I used it a little too much in the experience I am talking about.

A woman I know and deeply respect agreed to my request, nay demand, that she interview me for a podcast series she's doing for the Mount (MSVU - Halifax) about political communication.

She had mentioned the series during a phone call about something else.

I hopped on it immediately, which is unlike me. Usually I wait to be asked.

But now I am 39 probably indefinitely, and the askings aren't getting any thicker (unlike the effing mosquitoes in our yard), so along with my youth I am losing my shame about these things.

Anyway, she agreed and I sent her some ideas, and then she came along the other day with her laptop and her headphones and after we had had a long conversation about current political events, I had to arrange myself and speak into the middle distance about my time with the Rainbow Coalition (Irish government 1995 - 97), and I was having a bad day and all the prep I had planned hadn't got done, so I explained that I was going to have to wing it.

Some day I will do something that I don't pull out of my ass at the very last second.

Some day.

Anyway, it was extraordinary. Instead of silence, the words just poured out of me.... except for the bits where I was supposed to point out my learnings. I struggled with them. I used the word extraordinary too much and I lost my train of though trying to describe the internecine bullshit of the post-ceasefire handshake ballet....

But she urged me on with her eyes.

First learning is, I am a media whore like everyone else. I didn't want to stop talking. In fact, if I hadn't had to go pick up Little 'Un from his art class I would be still talking.

She sent me the podcast tonight. I listened to it twice.

It was extraordinary.

It was coherent. The nuances of some of the issues are conspicuous by their absence, but I was speaking to an audience who knows nothing of coalition. Unlike us Irish.

Second learning, I cannot believe how much I remember of those days. They must be seared on my brain.

Third learning, I got a strange feeling about myself when I listened back.

Normally when I talk about that time I am careful to point out how junior I was, how irrelevant I was. This time, there wasn't time to explain all that, so I chose my words carefully to try to get the message across and I did to a certain extent, but I also heard myself describe situations where I think now I probably did help out in the sticking together of the various bits of that communications experience.

It strikes me as extraordinary that it took a woman teacher from that great woman's university to record the unrecorded work of a woman who didn't even realise she was doing something useful back in 1996.

And so it joins the canon of the quiet work that women do everywhere that is never celebrated.

The second part of my recent media whoredom is my imminent guest appearance on another Halifax blog tomorrow. I had to write a letter to my home town... Dublin.

It's a little mawkish. But I love the piece.

I'm dying to see what the reaction is.

I hope I am busy in work tomorrow or else I will spend all day fretting over comments/ lack of comments.

MEDIA WHORE!!!

I'm thinking though... maybe now I am nearly forty I can finally find the confidence to like my voice. I don't mean my actual voice. I like my voice, even though it is a little lispy on air, which it isn't in my head.

Is it lispy?

I mean my opinions.

stop laughing, people from Ireland...

and people from Nova Scotia...

No, that's not right. Yous are all laughing too much.

I mean my reflections on my experiences. Which are legion, and pretty interesting in a boring kind of way.

I think I heard something in that podcast.

I think I wrote something in that piece.

I think I might have something useful to say.

Finally.

Being Dave Gorman-ish

Dave Gorman is a British comedian who made a name for himself by finding all (well, enough for a tv show) the other Dave Gormans in the world and then going to meet them.

I thought of him the other day when I googled myself (not out of vanity, it was a work thing..... no really it was...), and I was not only not the only person with my name in the googliverse, but the other one (who is a healthcare worker in Saskatchewan apparently) topped me in the results.
Queenie lost the top spot in her own SEO project... doesn't bode well for her future in deh world of deh online ...

But actually, after the shock, I was really thrilled. I have a very unusual name, so finding an exact namesake was pretty cool after about eight years of intermittent searching.

So then this evening I thought... Twitter has a search function...

And I'm able to blog because Himself and Little 'Un have gone fishing without me. Not that I wasn't invited. But it was that kind of invitation you get after they've spent four hours in the shed getting two rods ready and preparing the worms for trout and the thingummies for mackarel just in case, and discussed possible spots for both possibilities and packed the car and put on their fishing boots and are heading out the door sort of pretending I am welcome to come along.

So I said no.

Because if I were to go there would be delays because there would have to be blankets and chairs and thermos', and strawberry shortcake and all kinds of shenanigans. Which is why I don't get invited in the first place.

So it's all good.

I went mackarel fishing once and caught about fifty and it truly was the coolest thing I've ever done apart from taking the hooks out of their poor mouths and killing them.

Anyways, back to Twitter... where nobody dies... unless they're tweeting from Iran.

First of all I put my surname in the search engine and came up with someone who loved my brother's online tennis commentary from Wimbledon so much they posted it to Twitter.

Tennis?

Tennis!!!!!!!!!!!

D'ya have strahwbrees widdat, Baz?

So then I got myself orientated and typed my surname into the Find People engine which is what I meant to do (although it is always nice to see my brother online).

Aaron from Dallas, known as GoPearl, is an artist and writer who works hard saving companies money on their telecommunications. And only tweets about that. He sounds like a typical corporate dick, which is a pity because he's probably miserable (well I would be if I was an artist that had to spend all my time being a corporate dick).

Aaron, what you need to do dude, is to engage in the family tradition of sarcasm loaded with irony in your tweeting, in order to survive. Probably wouldn't save the companies that much money though.
300 followers.

Such a waste of a perfectly good following...

Benjamin from Arizona, otherwise known as Skulljammer is a comic book writer and has been up for 54 hours meeting deadlines.
120 followers. (plus me now so 121).

Dave won't say where he's from but he's moaning about the absence of UK adapters and he sounds like a Brit. He's here for a good time, not a long time.
34 followers.

Probably should vote for mr cameron next time then dave, if you're so fucking jingoistic you can't buy a universal adapter, yet so embarrased you can't put BRIT on your profile.

Matt from Phillie State doesn't like to use his full 140 chtrs. 'chillin'. 'summer'. 'witness'. etc. Having said that, he mourns the passing of Harry Kalas, the celebrated Phillie sports commentator who passed away during a commentary recently.
34 followers too.

A man of few words.

Must be from the Queen Dad branch of our surname tree.

Scott, also known as Mr. Blur, who is from a phone number rather than a place, is an avid cyclist who is tired of people thinking the world is their ashtray.
31 followers.

Well, guess what, Scott, me and my big fuck-off SUV, we're tired of people thinking the world is their velodrome.

Shannon, otherwise known as Supergrrrl, from Toronto is funny. And the first girl on the list.
30 followers. One of which is The Onion.

Attagirl!!!

John is my personal favourite. He appears to be in Iran, and he has the mullet to blend in well. But he's no Persian so far as I can see.
Give me liberty or give me death.
28 followers.

Here's a thought. You could actually pretend you were somewhere you weren't and tweet about it and get away with it, couldn't you... or am I missing some major Twitter honesty protocol.

This is my problem with Twitter.

That and the fact that the person from The Coast who is tweeting from the virgin mudfest is either really stressed or getting really drunk and incomprehensible, so even if I wanted to memorise the tweets and pretend I was at the concert I might make a big faux pas.... but then I could just pretend I was drunk....

which really is the key issue I have with twitter.

there is no truth protocol when you are dealing with 140 characters or less.

Having said that, look at all the nice people with whom I share DNA whom I have tracked down in just one hour.

There are pages and pages and pages of people with my surname on Twitter.

Follow one. Just for the hell of it.

Me, I'd go for the BeachBandito, otherwise known as Bruce.

That's me when I'm old.

Without the beard obviously.

Foggy times in the Maritimes

"To get people to care about your blog they have to not care at all about your "blog." And they shouldn't. Just words on a page, after all. They need to care about things much more interesting than that.Those things are: The story. The content. The offer."

I am stealing these words from a PR guy in Halifax, Joel, who describes himself as a vegan nerd and marketing asshole. Which I like. He has a blog about social media which you can read here.

He goes on to talk about different types of offer, and the content/ story they should contain.

I fall into his what happens in my life variety blogger I think.

The offer: catch up on what I'm doing without paying for a phone call/ reading FB/ writing me an email to ask whassup.

The content: sporadic, a bit same same, and generally self-obsessed.

The story: right now the story is that there's been no sun here for a long long time and so everyone in Halifax is becoming mildly psychotic, including me and Himself.

So yeah, sporadic, same same, self-obsessed, mildly psychotic post coming up.

If I could be arsed.

Maybe I'll just check the Weather Network again instead ... to see if the Weather Canada joke's finished.

The joke being that the prairie foodbowl is suffering a terrible drought this summer and we are flailing in fog and drowning in mizzle here on the Eastern Shore.

I have already checked it twelve times today.

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/index.php?product=weather&placecode=CANS0057#ltermfx

OHMYGOD... the sunshine peeping out from the clouds picture is up for Sunday!!!

No wait, it says cloudy periods.

Cloudy periods means the cloud cover will be so deep that it can creep into the house when we are asleep and make our hair wet, like it did last night.

Thunder storm tonight.. oh goody.

Maybe it will clear the air, said Himself.

Maybe. Maybe the psychotic stress headache we are all getting from the humidity will go away and then the sun will come out in our hearts, if not in our atmosphere.

Maybe.

Tina called to see if we wanted to go camping.

Apart from the fact that we lent all our gear away for the weekend... eh no, I am not spending tonight in a thunder storm in a tent that is located five hours drive from here, I said.

Only 60% chance of a storm, she said. We're leaving right now if you want to come.

I love Tina. She is the most optimistic person I know.

And they are going to New France. Where the sun always shines...

No, I'm too depressed.

Canada Day, I spent trying to plant our vegetable garden up to my knees in mud.

There is nothing more irritating than being completely mud-struck while being harassed by enormous horse flies.

Enormous horse flies who were vying with the blackfly and the mosquitos for the tasty bits of me located at the base of my spine, my ears, my elbows and the bits of the backs of my knees that were above the mudline.

I lost it.

FUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKING STOOOPIDDDD COUNTRYYYYY!!

I threw the spade down and watched it get sucked into the ooze that is my dream garden.

IWANNAGOHOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poor Himself.

He always thinks I want to go home when I cry and say I want to go home.

Oh lord, he says, trying to cheer me up, imagine what the pioneers must have felt like!

IMAGINE??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IDON'TNEEDTOEFFIN'IMAGINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started looking around with that look in my eye that Himself knows means I am looking for something to kick to death so he ran into the house and got me a beer and made me drink it so I got the hiccups the way you do when you are crying and drinking a beer really fast at the same time, so the horseflies won't get it.

After a while it kicked in and I felt better.

But the sun better come out soon.

DO YOU HEAR ME, MR. FOG???

Universal engager with the private

What a lovely occasion: Alice Munro celebrated in Trinity College Dublin (my alma mater of course... and the Queen Dad's.... and Gypsy's now too) for winning a prize awarded to her by a panel chaired by Jane Smiley, who was interviewed by Colm Toibin about that choice.

If I wasn't so delighted about the choice, I'd have Da Envee...

You can read about it here:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0626/1224249575138.html

Cabbages and cherries and things that go slime in the night.

Despite being at the tail end of sick in our house - Himself was the sicker and was taking killer antibiotics - we managed to have a nice weekend and get lots of yard work done.

I suppose I get to do the flower beds because I am a girl. And girls like flowers.

I am not one of those girls particularly.

I mean I like a nice herbaceous border as much as the next person, but you can't eat one nor can you donate it to Feed Nova Scotia come harvest-time.

Having said that, someone who used to live here put a lot of thought into the flower beds in front of the house. So I feel like I should resurrect them.

Currently they are buried in buttercups (hundreds of stringy roots with nothing to pull onto), dandelions (we all know about those bastards and the way they snap off and grow back), and some feathery weed thingy that has a root system comprised of interlocking elastic bands with a plant popping up every three centimetres along the elastic.

Really.

It has me stumped. I've never seen it before.

So I weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded and eventually cleared most of the weeds from one bed and saved about six plants, a hosta, some silver lace and a couple of gladioli that sat shivering in the cold tundra that was the newly weed-free zone.

Which meant of course that I had to go to the garden centre and buy fill-ins. I got a tray of Creeping Jenny and Allysium and some foxgloves (I am determined to have hummingbirds this summer) and hopefully they'll cover the bare ground before the buttercups rebound.

Mmmm, planting bedding is sooo much funnn.... not.

Himself and Justin who was over for a visit were playing with power tools nearby, in order to avoid weeding.

PZWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..... 36 volts, man... that's a nice piece of iron, dude ... PZWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.................... listen to that, man.... hey, let's 'fix' the deck......

Prob'ly shoulda dug the bed out, said Justin, in between drilling holes in the deck.

Prob'ly.

The second bed is so much worse than the first one I don't know how I am going to even start.

Prob'ly should dig the bed out...

Goddamn, I hate giving into weeds.

As well as the beds in front of the house, we have four big deep beds alongside the driveway, made of old railway sleepers, which are quite nice but are painted a disastrous shade of rust.

To hell with flowers I thought. Just got in and dug the dandelions out and we planted veggies there.

Himself put the fully loaded 36 volt drill down and made himself available to supervise this, as veggies are much more interesting than flowers.

So I/ we/ us planted cabbage, broccoli, beets, chives and parsley.

Ho hum, a couple of hours passed and I was passed out in exhaustion on the couch with a nice glass of pinot noir when Himself went out to check them for the umpteenth time and realised that crumbly old sleepers are where SLUGS live.

So now we are on slug patrol.

Apparently, in a rare episode of garden alignment, slug genocide was taking place in Ireland at the same time.

Poor slugs.... there's nowhere for them to go.

Firstly, we cooked a big pot of mussels and ate them on the deck and then we smushed the shells up and sprinkled them round the cabbages.

Didn't work.

Not enough mussels.

Last night, we were out at 10.30pm with a torch killing them with a kitchen knife.

Thirty eight.

If you're interested.

This evening we found two, so we have put beer in jar lids and are hoping that the slugs will die happy rather than at the hands of Himself the Slugvader.

Of course, none of this healthy constructive positive gardening activity can call itself the real action of the weekend, which was the official planting of the cherry trees.

While I was deciding between the yellow bedding or the blue, Himself found some CHERRY TREES.

To go with the tomatoes, no doubt.

So we've planted our first trees here. A nice little milestone.

Saturday night, we tested our fire pit (built for Polly's visit in August). First impressions are pretty good - nice draught, not too much smoke, hopefully we'll have a wind-free week and we can have a couple of nice evenings in the yard.

JD the squirrel finds a new world order

The feud between Himself and the squirrel living in his building ramped up a notch last weekend.

For those of you not in the know, the nature of the feud is based in the concept of 'his'.

Which one of them is the 'his' that the building belongs to.

The squirrel, having spent the previous Fall and winter living rent-free in the building, thinks it's his building.

Himself, having paid for the building, is pretty sure that it is in fact his building.

The noisy chatter that he gets from the squirrel every time he walks into the building to pick up a tool (in order to do some work) PISSES HIM OFF.

What does that goddamn squirrel do but eat corn all day?

But my man is nothing if not slow to anger.

A veritable leviathan progressing through the Bay of Fundy when it comes to rage.

But even the calmest leviathan will swallow a Jonah, if he won't shut the hell up!!

That is why last weekend, despite my best efforts at averting revolution by cleaning up evidence of grand theft corn, Himself went into the shed to do something and realised that the squirrel had gotten back into the carefully wrapped-up sack of cracked corn (which I had carefully placed in the thick plastic bin) and there was cracked corn all over the building.

ALL OVER THE GODDAMN BUILDIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MY GODDAMN BUILDIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The squirrel had managed to eat through the plastic this time. As well as the sack.

GODDAMN SQUIRREL, BATHIN' IN CRACKED CORN HE IS!!!!!!!! LYIN' BACK JUSTA SWIMMIN' AROUND IN IT!!! THINKS IT'S HIS EFFIN' CORN!!!!!!!!!!

I could hear the roaring from the house.

I'LL SHOW HIM!!!

Retribution was swift and brutal.

Every kernel of cracked corn (and when it was all found, it was a substantial amount of corn) got swept out of every crevice in the building, and the whole lot was put out in the yard in a big pile.

NOW!!

HE'LL HAVE TO SHARE!!

SERVE HIM RIGHT FOR BEING GREEDY.

Suddenly the rabbits, crows, wood pigeon, robins, jays, chickadees and other critters who had spent months getting by on just a tincture of cracked corn, provided to help them stay above the critter poverty line (with not even an increase to help with recent rampant corn inflation) .... they are all in carbohydrate heaven right now.

PARTYTIME!!!!

All the daily foraging routines have been disrupted in order to partake of the sudden corn largesse.

I have no doubt that this summer will see abnormally big baby critters emerging from dens all over the yard.

The babies will no doubt turn into a me-me-me Critter Generation Y and will break our door down in January demanding carb-rich three course meals, $120,000 jobs, and/or better EI (I mean corn) payments if this largesse doesn't continue.

Last night according to Himself, we even had Bob Rae the big old silver raccoon who pretends he's not living in our yard, come along last night for a bit of chow.

Seeing as it was goin' a beggin'.

If I was the squirrel, I would take my beating and my sudden eviction from the squirrel Versailles that is our buildin' like a man squirrel, and go find a new place to live.

Because the squeaking of tumbrils is quietly, but definitely discernible above the rhythm of the waves that is the soundtrack to our yard.

If I were JD the Little Red Squirrel, I would seclude myself, reflect on my loss and return in a few years... when the corn is gone... refreshed, with a new, superficially sustainable way of keeping everyone fed.

But no. He hasn't the wit to do it.

He is camped out on the pile of cracked corn, fighting everyone off.

As if he can.

He has been there all day according to Himself, who is home with a chest infection.

Instinct has kicked in and he's an aggressive little bastard.

JD the Little Red Squirrel ... not Himself.

Why wouldn't he be?

He's used to having most of the corn to himself.

He's used to being the only critter who knew where the corn was kept.

He's used to having unlimited access to the corn, to people turning a blind eye to grand theft cracked corn, to squirreling away some extra corn for the winter.

He's fighting for his political life as they say.

All the fat he's put on over the last couple of weeks is worn off him.

Our crows - we have three of them who are inseparable and who have that brilliant dark sense of humour that crows sometimes have - our crows have him driven demented.

It's so simple it's beautiful.

Desmoulins, Danton and Robespierre take turns to run at him, wings spread, until he panics and runs away under the building.

While he's cowering under the building, they pick slowly and desultorily at the corn, with their backs to him of course.

After a while he can't help himself and he chatters at them like an Albanian matriarch with four fields to plough and every son in a tower.

That's when they leave the pile to have a big lawerly convocation on top of the old pine tree, or to stare intently at something moving over by the lake. (Probably the mo-fo eagle nesting on the island).

Ahaa.... JD thinks!! The Fools!!!

Back he goes for a moment, and every time a swarm of starlings swoop down from absolutely nowhere, kick his skinny red ass again and grab their piece of the action while the crows stare into the middle distance and nod knowingly at each other.

JD has to retire defeated from the bombardment that is those locusts of the birdworld.

JD the Little Red Squirrel has learned two simple, irrefutable facts.

The buildin' does in fact belong to whomever pays for it.

And Himself, who paid for it, is a force to be reckoned with when his ire is raised ....

....

... We had an election in Nova Scotia this week.

It was quite the game-changer.

The forthcoming redistribution of the provincial corn will no doubt be just as entertaining to watch as the antics on Eagle.

Me... I'm rooting for the crows.

And scanning the horizon for starlings.

A Neck like a Jockey's B****x

As they would say at home.

GM has I mean.

General Motors, I'm talking about.

Or Government Motors as they call it now.

Here's their ad about the fact that they had to get a multi-billion dollar bailout from the taxpayers of the USA and Canada. I'm posting this mainly for the European readership - we have this advertisement inflicted on us approximately every twelve minutes if we are sad enough to be watching cable television.

The similarities with the all-American Budweiser beer commercials are obvious - they even have the thundering hooves of the American Mustang (which is a competing brand, no??) ... I wonder do they know they shoot mustangs nowadays.

Nice to see they're spending my money on getting down to business.... We're not going out of business, we're getting down to business.

Oh you are, are you? WTF were you doing up to now?

See, see, we have a photo of a solar panel in our ad, that means our cars don't use gas.

They just sold the Hummer brand to a Chinese company.

Roll on the resource wars...

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/02/new-gm-ad-breaks-online/

This ad makes me so mad I could spit. And its ubiquitousness means that it is being hard-wired into people who make their cultural decisions from televisual images..... which appears to be most people these days.

Terrifying manipulation of the people using their own money.

Can't we ban this stuff?

I mean, we ban drugs?

This is worse.