Longing for the good old days of the Martin Liberals.

My Air Force brat roots are such that major news involving the Canadian Armed Forces almost always gets my attention. My understanding of the Armed Forces’ all-too-frequent role as political football was first germinated amid all the dark mutterings that arose a bazillion years ago when then Minister of Defence Paul Hellyer “unified” the services, effectively eliminating Air Force dress blue and Navy dress white from the uniform wardrobes and building an entirely new uniform code framed on army green. In the process, service-distinctive ranks such as “Air Vice-Marshal” were also eliminated and, sadly, a great deal of the individual service branch pride that came with the distinctions.

If you’re really interested, a concise summary of the effect of Hellyer’s decision on the Canadian Armed Forces is here. (Scroll down to “Modern re-organization – The Unification”. Here’s a key line: “The reorganization has been criticized, for example by JL Granatstein in Who Killed the Canadian Military? In particular, the wholesale replacement of traditional naval/army/air force identities with army-style ranks and rifle-green uniforms had done considerable damage to the esprit de corps of the Canadian Forces. Paul Hellyer has since admitted that he made a mistake in taking away the distinctive uniforms.” But I do, indeed, digress.)

No, what really bugs me about the whole issue of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan turning captured Taliban prisoners over to the Afghani “authorities” who are widely suspected of torturing them – confirmed, if independent reports from numerous sources can be believed – is the absolutely appalling government messaging.

In recent days, Public Security Minister Stockwell Day has railed about giving any consideration to terrorists who would gladly hang your grandmother. Or as he himself put it, "[They had] no understanding of the rule of law, no understanding of the need for an independent judiciary, certainly no understanding of the democratic process where people can choose their leadership," he said.
"These people have no compunction about machine-gunning, mowing down little children. They have no compunction about decapitating or hanging elderly women. They have no compunction about the most vicious types of torture you can imagine." (National Post, April 25)

And the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence have both said, essentially, “Well, who are you gonna believe, us or people who’ve just been released from Afghani prisons?” Or as the Prime Minister put it, "We do not have evidence that [the torture] is true. And certainly I have to say that to suggest the Canadian Forces would deliberately violate the Geneva Convention, and to make that suggestion solely based on the allegations of the Taliban, I think is the height of irresponsibility." (Globe and Mail, April 25)

Interesting tactic, that, calling one’s own department of foreign affairs “Taliban”:

“But a secret report on human rights in Afghanistan prepared last year by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs says "extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common". Extracts were published in the Globe and Mail.” (Reuters UK online, April 25)

Equally interesting is the company these DFA “Taliban” keep:

“Similar claims have already been made in other major reports by Louise Arbour, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, the U.S. State Department and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, among others.” (CTV.ca, April 25)

I don’t often feel embarrassed about being Canadian, but the way the Tories are just flat-out refusing to admit the violations of the rules of the Geneva Convention, the denial of basic human rights and their complicity in the brutalization of prisoners by ordering that they be turned over to known torturers, and offering as their only rationale the riposte, “Well, they do really bad things!”, turns my stomach.

Because you just know if any evidence were ever brought forward that indicated Canadian soldiers were being tortured in the hands of whoever might capture them, this same government would be the first to unleash a horde of citations decrying the practice.

If two people do a wrong thing, it is still a wrong thing.

= = =

Things I’ve learned from doing cryptic crossword puzzles:

- An “ounce” is a kind of cat. A big cat. Specifically, an Asian snow leopard.

- “Pulse” is a collective word referring to edibles of the bean family, such as lentils.

- “Flower” can mean something that blooms. It can also mean “that which flows”.

- There are literally hundreds of different ways to say to a would-be cryptic puzzle solver, “re-arrange these letters”.

Fans of cryptic crossword puzzles are fans for many reasons, but always very high on the list is the fact that cryptic clue writers – and those who would seek to understand their creatively warped minds -- love the English language. And we (for indeed I consider myself a big fan of cryptics) love to play with it – from relatively simple twists like the two meanings in the above “flower” example, to some truly amazing linguistic twists and turns that are designed to keep the solving fan off balance.

If you’re already a crossword puzzle fan and you’ve been one for a long time and maybe you’re in search of a little bit more of a challenge and you think you might wish to try solving a cryptic, here are a couple things you need to absorb immediately.

1. Deciphering a cryptic crossword puzzle clue first of all requires that you forget everything you know about crosswords. A conventional crossword puzzle clue works on the formula: Here is a definition. You tell me the word, or its synonym (the clue will indicate “syn”); or its opposite (the clue will indicate “ant”), or its abbreviation (the clue will indicate, no surprise here, “abb”).

For example, the clue, “Capital of Canada” in a conventional puzzle will solve to “Ottawa”. Or in a slightly more creative turn, a conventional clue might ask you for “one of Canada’s ten (abb)”, which may be answered by “PEI”.

2. But a cryptic clue is designed to be a roadmap, or a brief set of instructions, to tell you how to assemble, or to show you the way to, the answer. Rarely does it offer anything so straightforward as a simple definition. So when that same phrase, “Capital of Canada”, appears in a cryptic puzzle clue, now it might be telling you that the letter “C” forms part of your answer. Because the capital of (the word) “Canada” is, of course, that uppercase letter with which it begins – “C”. And by that same logic, “the middle of Ontario” is the letter “a”; “end of time” is the letter “e”, and so on.

But there are dozens more cryptic cluing conventions. Anagrams, for example, are a big part of cryptic cluing, as are ways to tell you that you need to make an anagram. The clue might tell you to “break up”, “turn over”, “explode”, “shatter”, or any of dozens, indeed hundreds of other verbs that all mean “re-arrange” some or all of the letters.

For example, here is a cryptic clue: “Cathy breaks down when expensive boat appears (5)”. That seems a little weird, maybe even nonsensical as a definition. But treat it as a set of instructions. Start with the letters in “Cathy”, re-arrange them (“breaks down”) and the answer that “appears” is “yacht” (a word for “expensive boat”). It helps of course, that you’re told the answer has five letters and that’s a normal part of a cryptic clue – that’s what the parenthetical number at the end is.

Another convention? Homophones. The presence of a homophone is usually signalled by a phrase that suggests “sounds like”. That sounds simple, but like all things “cryptic”, sometimes it’s pretty deceptive.

For example: “Take in sound -- here in your ear.(4)” That’s a doubly misleading clue because there are actually two parts that could indicate the presence of a homophone: “sound” and “in your ear”. If you look at the first part of the clue, there’s really no other “sound” made by the words “take in” that could be anything else. So look at the second part of the clue: “here in your ear”, and Aha! “Here” sounds like (“in your ear”) “hear”. And “hear” means “take in sound”.

The best way I found to learn cryptics is to take a source that publishes one every day (the Globe and Mail, for example). Save a puzzle and, the following day when its solution appears, enter it word-by-word into its grid and try to make sense of how the clue writer created each answer. If you’re lucky, one a day will make sense for about a week. Then an occasional lightbulb clicks on and gradually, other conventions begin to make sense.

Containment is another popular cryptic convention. Take this clue: “A vast fleet emerges from a popular mad army.(6)” That doesn’t make much sense, but the clue is simply telling you that, among the words, “a popular mad army”, you will find something that means “a vast fleet”. And there, contained in “popular mad army”, is the word “armada”: populAR MAD Army.

As noted, cryptic clues also give the added hint of telling you if your answer is going to be a single word of X letters, or several words of “X” letters each. So if a cryptic clue is followed by (4,2,4), it means your answer will be a three-word phrase consisting of a four-letter first word, a second word of two letters, ending with a four-letter third word.

There’s a nice little book that’s been written about the love of cryptics. Its title is itself a cryptic clue: “Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose(8)”. I commend it to you. It’s written by someone who loves the genre and that comes across right from page 1.

Oh: “Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose(8)”? The clue is telling you to find your eight-letter answer by first taking a word that means “pretty girl”; then place it inside (“in”) a word that means “crimson” to give you an answer that means “rose”:

REBELLED

“belle” is your pretty girl.
“red” is crimson.
Placing “belle” in “red” gives you “rebelled”, which means “rose”, as in “The peasants rose against the evil tyrant.”

Wasn’t that easy? Of course not. But I can promise you that the sheer number of “Aha!” moments you derive from solving a cryptic’s wordplay is incredibly satisfying.

Weirdest cryptic clue I’ve ever seen? “E (13)”.

A single letter of the alphabet is all the clue you need to yield a 13-letter answer? In the most commonly accepted conventions, that one’s not really a completely correct form of cluing, because a cryptic clue customarily requires not only the clue, but also some indication of what the answer is. (In the above examples, "expensive boat", "vast fleet", and "rose" each point in turn to "yacht", "armada" and "rebelled". But “E(13)” while giving you an impossibly thin teaser and the number of letters in the answer, gives you nothing to indicate what that answer will be. (But one can hardly deny it’s cryptic!)

The answer, by the way, is “SENSELESSNESS”. And you get there by beginning with “SENSE”, subtract the letters in “NESS” and all you’re left with is “E”. But that’s not strictly in a cryptic cluing format.

Were I cluing “SENSELESSNESS”, I might cast it as… oh, “Touch, for example, without an Untouchable, is lunacy! (13)” You may need a bit of trivial recall to link “Untouchable” to “Ness”, but Kevin Costner’s portrayal of Elliott Ness in the 1987 movie, "The Untouchables" is certainly known to a great many in more recent generations, even if, to a great many of us old folks, the first link that comes to mind is of Robert Stack in the signature TV role from the series of the same name that ran from 1959 to 1963.

So my clue is telling you to start with a word that means “touch, for example” (“touch” is an example of a SENSE). Then find a word or phrase that means “without an Untouchable” (That’d be: LESS-NESS) to yield a 13-word answer that means “lunacy”: SENSELESSNESS.

But oh my golly gosh, isn’t “E(13)” elegant?

= = =

(All over the media for a few days recently) “Shock jock says something shocking. Nation is shocked”. (In other news, “Half the planet is blanketed by darkness at night”.)

(All over the media in mid-April) Variations on a theme of: “Deranged gunman who massacred 32 fellow students before killing himself was a ‘loner’ and a social outcast who had no friends”. Wow, what are the odds?

And in a related story – high road? Ummmmm. Not so much. CBC-TV news on April 19 pretty well blanketed their news coverage of the Virginia Tech shooter’s “rambling” comments, video and staged photos by piously noting they would not be airing any of the photos or showing any video clips from the package the “deranged killer” sent to NBC-TV because, they dutifully intoned, “experts have told us that to do so might encourage copycats”. Fine so far.

Then their television coverage switched to Henry Champ on the Western Tech campus, who described several scenes on the video in some detail, then actually quoted several of the gunman’s statements. CBC radio, meanwhile, contented themselves with reading several verbatim transcripts from the shooter’s ravings. Journalistic integrity, that’s our motto here at the CBC.

And every once in a while, the brick of common sense (or the “clue stick”, as a regular Baby Duckling is frequently fond of invoking) soars across the room and hits its target right between the eyes. Referring to the same video footage, here’s one news organ’s spokesman explaining why his organ would “severely restrict” its airing anything from the video or pictures sent by the shooter: "It has value as breaking news," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said, "but then becomes practically pornographic as it is just repeated ad nauseam."

Of course, that’s pretty well descriptive of television news coverage of anything, and it did come as families of the victims went ballistic at the heavy airing of what are, to them, deeply hurtful images. So they started simply canceling in disgust earlier commitments to appear on daytime talk shows of the offending networks. But the above-quoted newsie’s heart is in the right place, even if it only started beating about 12 hours too late.

= = = = =

A couple evenings ago, we were doing the Ottawa thing when winter finally, grudgingly gives way to spring. That “thing” would be sitting in the backyard while dinner is cooked on the barbecue. Later, after the sun had set and dinner was in the recent past, we were relaxing, still outdoors, when from overhead there came this loudly audible flurry of feathers and a noticeable thump as something either collided with, or something big landed on, one of our backyard trees. Turned out it was the latter. To our complete and utter astonishment, we looked up among the branches of the tree to find one of these girls looking back at us.

Yep. That is a fully-grown female wild turkey.

Size notwithstanding, she’s officially a “hen”, albeit a “hen” about half the size of Prince Edward Island who hit our ash tree with sufficient noise to suggest that a rather luckless skydiver had dropped in, but a “hen” indeed. The following morning, my other half contacted a local bird sighting hotline and added our sighting to a relatively small, but quite certain number of appearances of female wild turkeys recently in a few of our downtown and suburban trees and yards.

= = = = =

Life’s little ironies 1.

In another recent cryptic clue encounter, I discovered that “lynch law” is defined as “the process of punishing people by hanging without due process of law”.

Wait a minute – a law that is defined as the absence of law?

Life’s little ironies 2.

A colleague a couple cubicles away has a book – a book, understand – entitled “The Unwritten Rules”.

But... but... but... if they're "unwritten"... and this is a... you know, a book...

Life’s little ironies 3.

Recently at work we all received an e-mail advising us that a new “safe” storage place for employee bicycles has been built and is now open for business. The message announcing the new 50-bike cage began with this sentence:

“The Bike Cage provides a secure location where employees can lock their bikes safely and contribute to a healthy environment by helping control air pollution.”

And ended with this one:

“[The Department] is not responsible for any loss or damages resulting from the use of the Bike Cage.”

Until la prochaine.

A recent visit to the dentist…

On arrival at the office, I checked in immediately with the receptionist. "I'm Mike. I'm here for my 8:40 with Dr P." They crossed my name off and then a hygienist I've never seen before showed me into a room that I'd never been in before. (First clue that something was not entirely in order.) I was in there for 60 seconds when the hygienist came back in, and said, "Oh, sorry. Can you please just have a seat in the waiting room? It'll just be a couple minutes." (I'd just come from the waiting room. Second clue.)

While I was in the waiting room, the receptionist looked at me and said, "So you've lost a filling, right?" "No," I said, "I'm here for a cavity." (Third clue.) "What's your last name?" she asked. (Fourth clue. I said it and spelled it.) "We don't have you on our calendar," she said.

"What did you just cross off the list?" I asked. "That was a different 'Mike' who was also scheduled for 8:40." (She giggled.) "But we're going to take you anyway because he hasn't shown up yet."

"Alright," I said, "but would you please make sure you have my folder and not his?" (She laughed.)

Two minutes later, the dentist – Dr P – comes in, gives the folder a brief look, then looks at me and says, "So what can we do for you today?"

Now I'm starting to get a little pissed off. But you'd have been proud of me. I didn't let it show. And here are the next couple minutes of back and forth:

Me: "You booked me for a cavity."
Her: "Oh." (looks back at folder.) "You've left it a little long."
Me: "Pardon?"
Her: "Well... this goes back to last November."
Me: "No, it goes back three weeks when I was last here."
Her: (Returning to folder) "Oh?" Then she starts to probe around -- now she's actually hunting for the cavity!

Me: (before this gets too far along) "You also asked me to consider a crown. I've talked it over with my wife and I think I'm going to go ahead with that. What do I have to do?"
Her: "Well, you give me an OK to proceed. I contact your insurer. Are you insured?"
Me: "Yes, Government of Canada."
Her: "OK, so it'll take about a month. Then they'll either contact you or me. If they contact me first, I'll contact you. If they contact you first, you contact me and we'll schedule the appointments."
Me: "Appointments?"
Her: "Yes. The first one is about an hour; the second one is about 20 minutes."
Me: "Is it the same tooth as the cavity?"
Her: (Re-visiting my mouth.) "Ummmmmmmmm... yes."
Me: "So should I still go ahead with the repair today?"
Her: "Oh. No, if you decide to get the crown, we'd repair it as part of the crown process."
Me: "I see. And so do you need anything more from me other than the verbal OK I've just given you?" (That'd be the "I think I'm going to go ahead with that" above.)
Her: "Oh... No."
Me: "So we're done for today?"
Her: "Um...... yes."

And a $20 cab ride later, there I was, Bob’s-your-uncle, back at work. Still cavitied. Soon to be crowned. (Assuming they don’t inadvertently confuse me with someone looking for a full set of dentures.)

= = =

The good, the bad, but (knock on wood) no ugly…

Let’s get the moral out of the way first. Keep your receipts. No receipt too big. No receipt too small. Keep your receipts.

The bad: At home, one of our relatively new toilets has just started the somewhat disconcerting habit of generating a water flow sound, roughly every hour to hour-and-a-half. Typically, the water runs for about a minute, and then stops. After lifting the tank lid off, we noticed that what was happening over that time was the water level in the tank was ever so gradually falling a half to three quarters of an inch, until it reached the level where it tripped the tank re-filling process. At which point the tank refilled and it was that sound – of the water level’s being boosted back up to “full” – that we were hearing every 60 to 90 minutes.

So we called the people who sold us the toilets and were informed that it is likely a leaky “flapper”. (If you look into your toilet tank, the flapper is the large rubber plug that lifts away from – and then re-closes over – the main drain hole in the bottom of the tank every time you flush.) Having a leaky flapper is not catastrophic. The water leaking out just trickles into the toilet bowl, rather than the more disastrous outcome of, say, a leaky tank, which likely as not would send water trickling onto your floor. But it’s still a slow waste of water, no matter that it’s flowing into a perfectly safe place for collection.

So Preston Hardware (where we bought the toilets) informed us that they would order a replacement flapper valve – which is about a $12 part. It would be free, they said, if we had the receipt. Well we’ve looked high and low and the best we’ve been able to produce is a MasterCard bill which shows a payment to Preston Hardware on the date we know we purchased the toilets. But that’s not a “receipt”. So our new flapper isn’t free. Fortunately, it’s only a $12 part. No bank breaker.

The good: For about four months (since I received it as a Christmas gift), I’ve been fuming over the fact that a high-powered, high-priced coffee bean grinder we own has been blasting freshly ground coffee all over the place, in addition to actually delivering some from its spout into a container specifically designed for the purpose of catching ground coffee. We’d tried a couple ad hoc solutions, including enveloping about 80 per cent of the discharge spout with a homemade foil deflector. But it was an imperfect solution and I found that I was still spending as much time brushing up widely scattered ground coffee as I was actually grinding the beans and enjoying the freshly brewed product.

I’ll mention the name here – it’s a Kitchen Aid Model A-9. Don’t buy one.

The Kitchen-Aid Model A-9 is quite a beautiful piece of design – it’s deliberately fashioned to be “retro” and looks like a miniature version of the old style gas pumps or bubblegum machines where the slender base is capped with a large glass tank. Unfortunately, Kitchen-Aid sacrificed practicality for design, as I discovered when I started trouble-shooting the problem in search of a solution. The manual was no help at all, so I ventured online. If you Google that brand and model, you will find in very short order no shortage of disgusted comments from owners who are experiencing precisely what we did. Because the discharge chute points straight forward rather than down; and because the grinders whirl at one heck of a velocity, several A-9 owners find they are wasting coffee big time by spraying a measurable amount around the kitchen every time they grind more beans. (And if you’re sufficiently serious about your coffee to buy a high-quality grinder, you’re likely buying premium beans, not your average bag of Chock Full-o-Nuts.)

Added to my issues was the fact that I also want a machine that will produce an espresso grind. And despite what its literature promises, the A-9 simply is not capable of milling the beans to the fine consistency needed for espresso.

But all of this is in this section because, as with the toilets mentioned earlier, in this case too, after hunting for receipted evidence of the purchase, we were unable to produce nothing more than a MasterCard bill showing a payment on a specific date, not an actual store receipt for the product. But unlike the toilet outcome, this time the store – C.A. Paradis in Ottawa – is home to a management team whose spokeswoman, when I spun my story, said, “Just bring it in and we’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.” So I did and they did. They asked me for more details on what I wanted, and asked if I wanted an exchange for another of the same machines. But as I’ve already noted, my problem with the machine is design-based, and this was their top-of-the-line grinder. So there was nowhere else to go in terms of getting a better machine, and they decided the only solution was to process a full refund. But even more, they actually recommended a nearby (really nearby – they share the same parking lot) specialty espresso shop that sells machines specifically for that grind.

No receipt; no original packaging. They accepted from me – for a full refund – a machine in a plastic bag. (Granted, it was a heavy-duty LCBO bag that had most recently transported four bottles of wine, but still…)

So guess which store is going to continue to receive our business. And guess which one has now been relegated to the "Last-resort-if-we-want-something-specific-and-it’s-just-not-available-anywhere-else" place on our list.

For a $12 flapper.

Meanwhile, our kitchen counter is now home to a (so far, knock on wood again) first-rate Italian grinder that not only grinds espresso, it will fine-grind beans right down to the consistency of Nile River silt that is required for Turkish coffee. And they threw in a free kilo of premium Italian espresso-roast beans!

Oh – did I mention the moral of these stories? Keep your receipts. Not every business is a C.A. Paradis.

= = =

Anyone following the latest nonsense in the Bush White House from the “We are winning the war in Iraq” file of delusion (FOD) will take a masochistic pleasure in the reporting of a recent episode involving US Senator John McCain.

McCain recently went public with a comment to the effect that the proof of this “We are winning” assertion is that there are more and more places in Iraq where anyone can get out and take a stroll. Then to prove his point, he did just that – “strolling” through a popular outdoor Baghdad market…

But only after a few incidental “just another Sunday stroll in a Baghdad market by a US Senator” precautions had been taken:

“The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit. ‘They paralyzed the market when they came,’ Mr. [electrical appliance shop owner Jassim] Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. ‘This was only for the media.’” (Source: New York Times online: “McCain Wrong on Iraq Security, Merchants say”, April 2)

That little exercise in making your point should be cross-linked to any dictionary’s citations for “hubris”.

= = =

Signs, signs, everywhere signs…

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the seemingly sudden precipitation of quasi-Chinese Communist style hats into contemporary fashion? (This, for example, for only $55 $US)

On my daily homeward bound commute, I pass through a very busy East-West / North-South transit junction station and occasionally will spot one or two among the teeming throngs. And in the central food / shopping court at my office complex, a couple recent billboard posters have appeared for a youth-oriented clothing line and the models are all sporting them, with the added anti-revolutionary twist that they have them twisted on sideways.

What’s driving that? I can’t imagine there’s an idealistic bent to the sellers’ thinking, unless they assess Communist China solely in terms of its surviving its rather strenuous start-up. But if so, they’re conveniently shelving the historical memory of little episodes like the ChiComms’ rather abrupt collective armed “visit” to Tibet in 1949, from which they have yet to return; their sustained persecution of the Falun Gong, and of course, their signature piece, what the People’s Republic’s own literature officially calls the 1989 Beijing “incident”, and what the rest of the world recalls as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. (Much more here)

Of course, maybe it’s nothing more than the simple graphic fact that a brilliant red glossy star looks great on a forest-green hat and, if that’s the case, I can hardly finger-point. I confess I have some politically incorrect graphics in my own university background and, at the time, I chose to overlook its history in favour of its design. For one entire year of the four I spent in residence, a small corner of my wall was adorned with a full colour WWII German Navy battle flag, simply because I really liked (and still do) the graphic assembly of its red, white and black lines and curves.


(It probably comes from the same set of neurons wherein you’ll find an appreciation for one of my favourite non-Nazi art forms – this genre and especially this artist.

That being the case, what the hell? Go for it, I say! But on the other hand, if our nation’s schools suddenly start stocking up on textbooks that are little, and red… well, I’m going to re-assess my glib dismissal of this most recent form of youth haberdashery.

Until la prochaine.

= = =

Dr Ballard… paging Dr Ballard…

In a follow-up to the last update’s note on the Great Pet Food Scandal of the Century!! (tm Reg’d; Pat Pend; All Rights Reserved; Misuse is Abuse), I offer the following.

The Ottawa Citizen reported on Sunday March 25 the story of Elaine Larabie, a woman who had recently adopted a dog from the Humane Society. The dog, that Elaine named Missy, had only ever been fed on table scraps from the hands of people at the table.

Missy apparently was having a serious problem adjusting to the concept that something placed in a bowl on the floor could be considered “food”. So this woman, applying that which distinguishes us from the apes (or the sponges, if you’re a fan of “Inherit the Wind”*) reasoned that if she ate some of the dog’s food from the dog’s dish – in front of the dog – the dog would clue in to the fact that the floor-borne comestibles are, indeed, supper.

Well, this can’t come as a surprise to anyone, but Ms Larabie became ill -- specifically (according to the CanWest News Service story), “she suffered a range of ‘confusing’ and ‘embarrassing’ symptoms, including loss of appetite, vomiting and foaming of the mouth. She also had problems urinating”. And she did this FOR TWO WEEKS! (That dog’s Humane Society file must have been labelled “Slow learner”.) (For the record, just reading this is kinda causing me to suffer loss of appetite… but I digest.)

Anyway, she has concluded that she and her dog managed to get hold of some of the tainted food, before it was pulled from all the shelves in North America that offered pet food for sale.

As I read through her story in that Sunday’s Citizen, I have to confess that I really could not find any point at which my sympathy switch was activated. That probably says more about me than it says about anything else, but there you are. And even worse, I wondered what in heaven’s name would prompt this woman to call a major local daily newspaper, tell them she’s been (literally) wolfing down Alpo in an effort to convince her dog it is food, and then to welcome both a reporter and a photographer into her home in order to have this story played very prominently in the paper’s weekend edition.

* The little aside refers to this memorable exchange between Spencer (Henry Drummond / HD) Tracy and Frederic (Matthew Harrison Brady / MHB) March in the film:

“MHB: We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!
HD: Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one thing that sets above the other animals? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse stronger and swifter, the butterfly more beautiful, the mosquito more prolific, even the sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?
MHB: I don't know. I'm a man, not a sponge!
HD: Do you think a sponge thinks?
MHB: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!
HD: Does a man have the same privilege as a sponge?
MHB: Of course!
HD: [Gesturing towards the defendant, Bertram Cates] Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think!”

= = =

And here’s why you don’t necessarily want your corner populated by a supporter who is a Canadian Olympic gold medalist, even if she is an attractive, blue-eyed blonde who packs a rifle (because her sport is the biathlon)…

A recent decision of a federal court judge has ruled that former CN Rail chief Jean Pelletier – a friend of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien -- was unfairly dismissed by friends of more recently former Prime Minister Paul Martin. Ducklings with long memories might recall that Pelletier characterized former Olympian Myriam Bedard as a “pitiable single mother” in refuting a number of the claims she made during the Gomery sponsorship scandal hearings. The Martin government responded by sacking him… perhaps a tad prematurely if subsequent evidence is anything to go by. A Toronto Star article (March 30 online) about the most recent judgment recalls some of the previous Bedard testimony and a subsequent media appearance not of her own choosing:

“Later the same month, the former Olympic gold-medallist expanded on those allegations at an inquiry into the sponsorship scandal which received her stunning testimony with deep skepticism. She said her boyfriend had personally convinced Chrétien to keep Canada out of the Iraq war, that an ad agency involved in the scandal also trafficked in cocaine, and that race-car driver Jacques Villeneuve was paid $12 million to wear the Canadian flag. Bedard was in the news again at the end of last year for allegedly abducting her daughter before being arrested in Maryland.”

My suspicion now is that the feds are simply going to have to take their lumps and work out a deal with Pelletier because pressing it further is only going to add additional court costs to the eventual settlement. My other suspicion is that the digital appearance of “M Bedard” on any Parliament Hill telephone’s call-identification window is going to result in a telephone cord’s being summarily yanked from its wall socket.

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I am nothing if not a big man, and since it takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong, it seems there has been a recent accumulation of follow-ups to suggest that some of my first reactions missed the mark:

1. Several months ago, I ventured that a very short, unhappy life would be lived by a “green box” garbage re-cycling program instituted in my father-in-law’s neighbourhood. To me, it looked like homeowners were being asked to lay out a raccoon buffet every week, and were further being asked to hang a “Welcome Vermin!” sign on the containers because they were required to leave the lid unlocked, in fact without even the impedance of a bungee cord.

Well it turns out that not only is the program a soaring success, it is now being introduced in Toronto, where it is being welcomed.

2. It seems that damned “tainted pet food” story (above) has ever more serious legs. While I still vigorously lament the class action lawsuit’s being pursued, the number of pets actually made ill by the associated products might (emphasis on “might”, at this point) run up into the thousands. The corporate financial hit is also heading into the stratosphere. So contrary to my first ramble, it ain’t simply a case of a dozen and a half cats and dogs. It’s a whole bunch of them – oh, and one somewhat misguided dog owner. (So far)

So I was wrong about that, too.

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And finally: Coincidence? I think not.

Even though 99 per cent of my home e-mail spam is snagged by Rogers in a very effective “BULK” e-mailbox at its own website before I even transfer my e-mail to my computer, I still always do a quick scan of both “SUBJECT” and “FROM” in the “BULK” box because once in a while it’ll actually be a legitimate e-mail message from a source to whom I’ve subscribed, or from family or friends who’ve sent a gang mailing to a whole lotta people – something Rogers also treats as spam on many occasions.

So recently, I got a chuckle out of the SUBJECT that showed up one message from someone who, I suspect, was offering to hook me up with the opportunity to buy everything from an Irish Sweepstakes ticket to a ticket on Spain’s annual massive national game of chance, El Gordo.

The SUBJECT?: “Worldwide Lootery Agent”.

Chalk one up for truth in advertising.

À la prochaine!