Tag Archives: Canada

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Fibbing Friday #315

Last week, Pensitivity101 thought it was time for a laugh. These were all popular comedy shows. If you didn’t know, what do you think they were about?

1. Bless this House.

A young priest, assigned to his first, small, rural parish, has a crisis of faith when he begins to doubt that God actually resides in the rectory with him.

2. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

From the producers of the Miss Bel-Air Pageant, comes the male equivalent!   All those males strutting their stuff, and looking for the top prize, and all the ladies getting what they’ve wanted for so long!

3. Diff’rent Strokes.

A niche porn channel

4. Porridge.

A specialty Scottish cooking series, with titles like Haggis, and Groats

5. Only Fools and Horses.

This is a 30-minute, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series about the daily debacles of Donald Trump, and his unstable stable of yes-men – with particular reference to Canada.  Adolph Hitler lost WW II when he opened up an eastern front by attacking Russia.  Trump has opened so many fronts – Canada, Venezuela, Iran – that his foreign policy is like a hospital gown.  He can’t cover his ass!

6. Happy Days.

When you actually get a good night’s rest, score some time to yourself, get all the things done, and/or have someone else do the cooking for supper!

7. The Golden Girls.

Another limited-audience (but not limited enough Ew!!  Ew!!) porn channel

8. The Good Life.

A vanishing breed in today’s world. It, like common sense, is no longer common!  With rising costs for food, fuel, housing, and other needs, affording those extras gets harder and harder these days.

9. M.A.S.H.

Some new cooking show on that specialty channel.
Making Appealing Supper Hampers

10. Cheers.

That was a 90-minute special on the Fools and Horses series, when Trump had to remove all tariffs, to avoid a palace coup.  (Et Tu, Brute?)  Rumor has it that there will be another, follow-up episode, when the Americans – politicians and populace – realize that we’ve sold our oil to China, our wheat to India, and our aluminum to South Korea.

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Flim-Flam Phlegm

I was never a snot-nosed kid, but following my heart surgery, I have become a snot-nosed octogenarian.  It seems that I am constantly sniffing, snuffling, snorting, sneezing, wheezing, coughing, honking, barking and blowing.  It can’t have been caused by the physical operation.  I suspect that I have allergies to one or more of the new medications that I’m taking – irritating, but an acceptable tradeoff.

My Father contracted chronic bronchitis from serving on ships in the North Atlantic, during WW II.  Throughout his life, he suffered extended bouts when he would cough up and swallow mucus.  He probably, unconsciously, learned to self-medicate with Coca-Cola.  The acids help break up the long-molecule phlegm, and ease digestion.

He drank one Coke a day.  He was raised on the old 7 ounce bottle, which Coke first enlarged to 10 ounce, then changed to cans, and finally upsized to standard American 12 ounce – 355 ml here in semi-metricland.  I often saw him crack one, and pour a third of it down the sink.

Possibly because of an increasingly aged population who prefer and can handle only a smaller quantity, the 7-ounce serving is kinda, sorta making a comeback.  Stores are now offering “Minis,” which, here in Canada, are 222 ml, or 7.5 US ounce bottles and cans, .  Other than, “It’s a handy, portable size.” I can’t seem to discover exactly why that size was chosen.

Seven ounces isn’t very much, but in normal circumstances, no amount of soft drink could be considered ‘healthy.’  My Mother nagged convinced him to give up his addiction to Coke, and consume a small glass of milk, instead.  With the best of intentions, it was exactly the wrong thing to do.  Milk, in a stomach already full of phlegm, caused even greater digestive distress.  When we discovered what she’d done, the wife explained the benefits to Mom, and got Dad back on his “medicine.”

Remembering that, now that my nose seems to be constantly running, and my sinuses forever draining, I often swap out my afternoon chocolate milk, for a 6 ounce juice-glass of Pepsi – diluted with an ice cube, a splash of filtered water, and a dash of Morello Cherry syrup.  For more life hacks, follow me here – mostly to ensure that I don’t wander off and get lost.

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J U X T A P O S I T I ON, Too

Once upon a time, I published a post about

JUXTAPOSITION

a word which has come to mean the vivid, visual disorientation of viewing two, very different things, beside, or near each other.  The examples I gave, were a tiara on a pig, and a Rembrandt, hanging in a Port-A-Potty.  I was recently exposed to a Canadian case in point.

I had to take the wife to an Oral Surgery and Maxillofacial Clinic, 75 miles away, in Canada’s dark, dirty, dingy, rough and none-too-ready steel city.  When we finally arrived, after navigating the bewildering downtown maze of one-way streets, I was suitably impressed with the magnificent little edifice.

It was relatively brand-new – perhaps 5 years old.  It was clean, and neat, with swaths of well-polished glass, shiny stainless steel trim, and Carrera marble.  You’ll have to take my word for it, because I could not locate any online external images of the place.  It’s almost as if they are ashamed of their neighborhood, and don’t want to scare off any potential customers.

I can’t say that it’s in a ‘Bad Neighborhood.’  It’s about normal for this place.  The street in front looks feels like it’s maintained by the Ukrainian Paving Company.  Cheek by jowl with, and across the street from it, are an ‘Adult Theater’, tattoo parlor, Payday Loan Company, cannabis dispensary, Moe’s Cavern dive bar, and Bob’s Pizza (Hiring delivery drivers.)

I stayed at a motel in a neighborhood like this, north of Detroit, and it had an armed security guard, but this is Canada, where guns are banned – except for criminals – and muggers have to say please, thank you, and sorry.

Ten years from now – or twenty – gentrification will have set in, and it will be surrounded by doctors’ offices, and spas, and tony salons, but right now, it sticks out like the only unsore thumb.

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(continue last year’s anti-Festival Of Conspicuous Consumption Christmas rant here)

Canada’s celebration of Yuletide commercial excess continues to match, and even exceed, the USA.  Local radio stations and store Muzak play-lists switched to All Christmas All The Time back at Thanksgiving – but that’s CANADIAN Thanksgiving, in late October.

I was recently in a store where I heard Driving Home For Christmas, and thought, “It’s your own damned fault.  If you hadn’t got yourself on a terrorist watch, and No-Fly list, you wouldn’t have to drive.”

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Book Review #32

Some science fiction authors write about the future – but they do so in more than one way.  In the late 1960s, the prop-master for a Sci-Fi TV series, cobbled together a hand-held, fold-away, ship-to-shore communicator between an orbiting spaceship, and the ground party.  20 years later, millions of people owned flip-phones.  Sci-Fi authors in particular, can be very prescient, revealing as-yet unseen developments.

Title: Mona Lisa Overdrive

Author: William Gibson

The review:

This is the third book in a trilogy, beginning with ‘Neuromancer,’ and ‘Count Zero.’  They make more sense, read as a trio, but he put in pretty good STOP/START points, so that each one is fairly well self-contained.

Actually, the story itself is rather unimportant – a small-time quest for more money and power in a post-apocalyptic world.  It’s the ‘matrix’ upon which he builds the action that is significant.   I obtained an undistributed 1989 copy of the story first published in 1988 – when the Internet was still a baby – when few of us even knew computers existed, or owned one – when some of us weren’t even born.

This is the author who conceived The Matrix, who wrote the book about neural data storage and transmission, which became the Keanu Reeves movie, Johnny Mnemonic.  The book is rife with drug use – organic, custom-designed laboratory, and neurological.  He foresaw ‘Influencers.’  You can upload and experience segments of important people’s lives, by inserting mini-flash drives into USB-type ports in your neck, and get electronically buzzed the same way.

He was the Canadian equivalent of Philip K. Dick – both of them needing a good screenplay writer to tone down their stories.  He lived in southern British Columbia, where special mushrooms were common in the wild, and fairies and unicorns – and less pleasant apparitions – gamboled in the woods.  He may have invented Sasquatch.

It was an interesting time passer, but I wouldn’t really recommend it.  If you do drugs – it won’t make any sense – and if you don’t do drugs – it won’t make any sense.

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’25 A To Z Challenge – N

I HAVE A HORSE THAT I NAMED ‘MAYO’
MY HORSE MAYO, NEIGHS

Now, don’t get your nickers in a not.

Just more proof that English will never be written phonetically, when we get to the meat/meet/mete of the problem.

English is Janus-like – two-faced.  You can dabble around the edge with clarity, problem-free, but you don’t need to wade in too far to find out how simply complex it can be.  Most dictionaries insist that

NICKERS

are the same as neighs, but my horsy friends who speak English, insist that it’s the difference between a giggle, and a guffaw.

Identical pronunciation aside, there are three quite different meanings for the word.  Nicker can be a sound that a horse makes.  It can also be a person or thing that makes nicks in something – like Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac.  As a Canadian, I was interested to find that it’s also a British, and Australian, slang term for a Pound, Sterling.

I never say nay, but I’m gonna ride off into the sunset of Wednesday.  Feel free to saddle up and follow.

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Fibbing Friday #278

Last week Pensitivity101 asked, How’s your history and general knowledge? (I’m old enough to have lived through most of it, so you may see the occasional reference to Plato, or Julius Caesar)

1. Which Monarch famously said ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king?’

Queen Latifah

2. What is the rarest blood type in humans?

Canadian blood – we’re Eh-positive

3. Who wrote the novel Brave New World?

Elon Musk!  It was going to be the tale of using SpaceX to terraform and colonize Mars, but it became a how-to manual about surviving the last Trump.

4. Which famous composer was deaf for much of his later life?

Eric Clapton – in the beginning, his group played so loud that the Cream clotted.

5. What was the name of Rick’s nightclub in the movie Casablanca?

In honor of a broken knee that he got while on a drunken bender, he called it the Gin Joint.

6. What is the world’s largest species of penguin?

The one in the Batman movies

7. Who was the first female Prime Minister of the UK?

Lloyd George’s grandsomething – Boy George

8. Which painter cut off part of his own ear?

The contractor who was renovating the Roman coliseum.  He heard Marc Antony say “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” and he wanted to Make Rome Great Again.

9. What is the most widely spoken language in the world by number of native speakers?

Profanity

10. Who were the Axis Powers of WW2?

Argentina and Uruguay  A lot of Germans who would have been considered war criminals, quietly spun out of sight in Europe, and rotated across the Atlantic, to become preferential citizens of these countries – because they preferred to bring gold with them.

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Money For Nothing – And The Kicks For Free

Sticking my nose into other people’s business became profitable again; not Retire To The Riviera profitable, more like a hot chocolate and apple fritter at Tim Horton’s.

I stopped at a local grocery for chocolate milk.  As I do every time, I checked out the coin-counting machine on my way out.  I don’t know why anyone would use these things.  The percentage rate of payout is lower than most casinos, without the excitement of the bells and lights.

I leaned over and inspected the overflow chute, and was rewarded with the gleam of coins – two handfuls – half a shirt-pocketful.

As always, I waited till I got home to count the loot – $9.80, plus a couple of minor treasures.  4 Toonies = $8, plus a bunch of quarters, dimes, and nickels.  One dime was pre-1965 silver, worth three times its face value.  The rest filled my dime bank, to produce a roll that I will deposit in a bank account that I had hoped would help finance a trip to visit John Erickson, but which Trump et al’s insanity is making less and less likely.

The other prize was what probably caused the log-jam – an 1870 Canadian, silver, five-cent coin, as thin as a dime, and about half the surface area.  In 1922 it grew to its current size, and it was called a nickel, because it was made of nickel,  Other than the Copperpenny – a local band who had a couple of hits, riding on the British invasion – this was the first Canadian coin that was not made of silver.  Surprisingly, my coin is not terribly rare, and is only worth about $2, but my little Silver Surfer is mounted and placed in my coin catalog.  

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Well Known One-Liners

I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting….
….Anonymous, hell, I knew everybody there.

I work as a lifeguard….
….It is my job to actively fight natural selection.

On the internet, you can be whatever you want….
….It’s amazing how many choose to be stupid.

Attention drama queens….
….Auditions for today have been cancelled.

I am so in debt….
….I could start a government.

Now that we’ve got hand sanitizing down….
….Next stop, turn signals.


Everything is a conspiracy theory….
….when you don’t understand how anything works.

Are we great yet?….
….Cuz I just feel embarrassed

If money is the root of all evil….
….why do churches beg for it?

How do you keep Canadian bacon from curling in the pan?….
….Take away its broom, eh

What constitutes 50% of Canada?….
….The letter A

When a Canadian went for a blood test….
….the results came back Eh-positive.

I used to love hockey, but switched to a less violent sport….
….Now I’m into MMA.

What do you call a sophisticated American?….
….A Canadian

Scientists are baffled by Canadians’ ability to watch movies and play video games….
….and not shoot other people.

Canada could have had it all: American industry, British Culture, and French Cuisine….
….Instead, they got: French Industry, American culture, and British cuisine.

In Canada, we use BCE, instead of BC….
….It stands for Before Christ Eh.

In Europe, it’s called a lift.  In Canada we call it an elevator….
….I guess we were raised differently.

In Canada, you are more likely to die….
….from a moose kick, than a terrorist attack.

My wife says I’m mean when I drink whiskey….
….Now I drink Canadian whiskey.  I’m still mean – but I apologize.

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Patriotic Duty

Donald Trump has managed to do something that no other politician – domestic or foreign – has ever done.  He has instilled a sense of National Pride in normally blasé Canadians.  He put some lead in our pencils – some backbone in our spine.  He has become the focus of Canadian, and Canadians’, distaste – even hatred.

The echoes of his voice, threatening to annex Canada had hardly faded, when tee-shirts were offered online, that read, CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE! and WE’RE #1 – NOT # 51!  Signs and notices have gone up everywhere.  Companies, businesses, and influential Canucks are urging citizens to Buy Local, Buy Canadian, and Boycott Trump.

Clutch.ca, an online, used-car trader, is busy assuring everyone that they are strictly Canadian, and not a tentacle of an American conglomerate.  Roadhouse/bar, Montana’s boasts that they have been Proudly Canadian for 30 Years.  It might not have been so critical if they’d been named Alberta’s, although that sounds like an Italian spaghetti joint.

Stores, especially groceries, are festooned with little, red, Maple Leaf tags and stickers, telling shoppers which goods are produced in Canada.  Canadians are only polite for so long.  That line may have been reached.  To Have And To Hold!  If Trump tries to go ahead with his hopes and plans for Canada, he may find that both of those are far more difficult than he ever imagined.  Captain Canuck, and all his Canuckleheads will give businessman Trump, the business.

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Fibbing Friday #270

Pensitivity101’s theme last week was What The H?

1. What is halitosis?

Better than no breath at all

2. What is an hallucination?

A wet dream about Charlie Brown’s girlfriend.  Not me!!  I’m not into that sort of thing.  Tonight I hope to have a dream about Wilma Flintstone.  She’s kinda sexy in that fur bikini.

3. What is hell?

Hell is other people.
Hell is working in retail – on Black Friday.
Hell is being a Starbucks barista.
We can’t go to Hell – ‘cause we’re already there!

4. What is a hurricane?

A short stick with a curved top that helps old geezers like me to hobble a little faster

5. What is ham fisted?

That’s Cousin Clay, at any family Thanksgiving dinner.  By the time he’s got his Fair Share, the kids are eating tofu burgers.

6. What is the hokey cokey?

It’s a ritualistic little party dance, engaged in by revelers who absorb their recreational medication through their nostrils.  I was addicted to it for a while, (the dance!  Not the drug) but I turned myself around.  The hokey-pokey is a ridiculous little jail, like the one in James Garner’s movie, Support Your Local Sherriff.

7. What is hoosegow?

See above.  Great line from the movie, “He tricked me, Pa.”

8. What is a higgler?

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9.What is a hogger?

I’ve already mentioned Cousin Clay.  He was recently escorted off an airplane because he was occupying two seats – only one of which he paid for.  The airline thought they were going to have to make two flights.

10. What is a hodge?

Also known as a longhouse, it was the communal housing building that the Squamish Indians of Canada’s British Columbia used to live in.  Nowadays, they all have nice, individual homes that are better than those of taxpayers who fund them.