"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" - Tarantino Style

O-Ren Ishii: You didn't think it was gonna be that easy, did you?

The Bride: You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did.

O-Ren Ishii: Silly rabbit. Trix are for kids.

Some people are reminded, when viewing their yards after the first snowfall of the year, of Robert Frost’s poem “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”.
My yard, on the other hand, immediately brought to mind the battle scene from Tarantino’s “Kill Bil: Vol 1" where O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui) and The Bride (Uma Thurman) battle to the death in a snowy Japanese style courtyard. The scene is visually stunning, soft snow falling, the clacking of a bamboo fountain, and the soft sound of Hatori Hanso steel as it cuts through skull and brain mass.

Truly one of the best partial decapitation scenes ever in a motion picture, and to my memory, the only one that features woman fighters. O-Ren underestimates the Brides prowess with the samurai sword and taunts her with the classic line “Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with Samurai swords…” She regrets such taunting moments later, when the Brides steel cleaves through her skull, revealing to the audience a pretty good view of her thought organ, and collapses serenely into the snowscape.

So anyway, that’s what snowy evenings in my yard bring to mind. I have to get me one of those clacking fountains.

What's Going on with Stephan

What in the Sam Hell is going on with Stephan Harper? This is the man that we all love to hate, Canada’s little Hitler.

But lately, I’m a little confused.

His policies are starting to make sense. Sure, he’s still opposed to gay marriage and same sex rights…but otherwise, he’s been making some completely logical decisions

It’s not like he’s my new hero or anything, but maybe he’s not as evil as we all thought. I mean our boys are still in Afghanistan, but on the other hand, they were there before Stephan came along. What is new are a set of policies that have a distinctly non-Harper lean to them. Harper has drawn a lot of criticism for most of these moves from the opposition, but then again, that’s what the opposition does.

Let’s review:

Removing the Income Trust loop hole that allowed huge corporations big tax breaks…I see this as a good thing. Critics argue that by doing this Canada becomes less appealing to foreign investment, as we are perceived as an unstable investment environment. Translation, foreign corporations can no longer make huge tax free profits by using income trusts to shuffle their taxes on to the backs of Canadians. Harpers view: Canadian taxpayers don’t get screwed by huge corporations trying to make huge tax free profits. I’m going to give this one to Stephan.

Criticizing China for its poor human rights record, instead of sucking up to build a better trade relationship. Critics argue that pushing the human rights issue with the Chinese was wrong, because the approach was too aggressive. They suggest that we should put the human rights issue on the back burner and use our trade partnership to guide (presumably through osmosis) the Chinese to better a better Human Rights record. Harper’s view: make a statement that says human rights come before a smooth trade relationship. I’m giving this one to Stephan too.

Instead of spending billions of dollars on an ineffective gun registry that just pisses off gun toting rednecks and has no impact on gun toting criminals…make stiffer penalties for gun toting criminals and deny bail for those who use guns in crimes. The critics didn’t have much for this one; it’s hard to argue that violent criminals should be given much. Again, Stephan gets a point.

Letting Quebec say that they are a separate nation within a united Canada without giving them any more special treatment than they already have. The critics argue that this is a divisive move that threatens the unity of a nation. Harper argues (presumably) that allowing Quebec to cling to a meaningless definition is harmless, and may appease them…it’s not like he’s the one who gave them the distinct society clause. Viewed as a semantic issue (which at this point it clearly is) a speedy resolution to the nation within a nation question is in my view, a good thing. Score another for Stephan.

So you probably get my point by now. Stephan’s doing things that we (I) would not have expected. It’s not like he’s my new hero or anything (unless he gives Bush the finger and pulls our troops out of the middle east) but it’s beginning to look like a Conservative leader in a minority government isn’t as bad as we (I) would have expected. Perhaps having Stephan on the right, and Jack Layton on the left, moves us in to an effective middle ground. Sure, we won’t be meeting our Kyoto commitments until 2050, and sure our net debt is just a media spin phrase, but hell, I’m impressed.

The only catch to this political bliss I’m experiencing is the haunting feeling that perhaps this is all a contrived ploy be Harper to build our trust while he unfolds his true (and hidden) evil agenda. On the other hand, he made Rick Mercer a sandwich, and it looked like a tasty one at that. The verdict is still out on Stephan. Maybe it is possible to be just a little bit evil. That said, remember one thing….he’s a damn sight better that George Walker Bush. Also, as I'm sure you've noticed...dude looks a little stoned in every single picture I've ever seen of him...this could explain a lot.

The Black Pearl

Well folks…time for the obligatory weekly post on the old BLOG (not that I’ve held myself to that rigid schedule…but seeing as I’m now seasonably… (Sorry…seasonally)…unemployed, I figured I’d best get with it and keep my public (currently 3 or so dedicated readers) content.

I could talk about what I’ve been doing in the aftermath of the big storm, the tedious home renovations, the painstaking refinishing and touch-ups on the old homestead…but unless you have a serious interest in the restoration of 1930’s window frames…you might just want to throw yourself in front of a train. (on a side note here...the upside of refinishing window frames is that the detail/ orbital palm sander is the one tool I can violate my self imposed “No Wine and Power Tool Operation Rule…seriously…the worst that can happen is that you sand your fingerprints off... good for committing crimes.. but man they are sensitive little piggies on this keyboard). I could also go off on my planned topic, the flatulent nature of my dog, but I think Tai covered that subject to death about a week back.

Anyway I thought it prudent at this juncture to talk a bit about my other hobby… INTERNET PIRACY. Arrgh maties!!! (Kira always gets hot when I use the pirate speak…fancies me a pirate …or a Johnny Depp look alike).

So today we discuss the beauty that is the TORRENT file. Unknown to me until mere weeks ago, this is (to use the vernacular of the young and better looking) the bomb!

Tomorrow marks the day of the North American release of the new Tom Waits album (a three disc collection of rarities and rejects from the past ten years), called Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards. Today marks the day that I downloaded it for free from TorentSpy. Seriously…this is the life. This, by the way, is an album worth buying (and if I hadn’t already stolen it, I might just have done that). Tom wails on in his signature fashion for over three hours, with plenty of good narrative stories to punctuate your listening pleasure. This is Waits at his best…his recent albums have been varied…Mule Variations proved again that he was a genius…but the dual release of Blood Money and Alice is strictly for Waits diehards….Real Gone (his latest) was real good…but this latest compendium tickles the soul. There is one track on it, a spoken word interlude set to a funky beat (if I had the ability I post the thing on here for you to listen, but if you want, I’ll email it to you) that chronicles the interesting predatory/defensive habits of insects, and compares them to human behaviour. With passages like “The female paying mantis devours the male while they are mating. The male sometimes continues copulating, even after the female has bitten off his head and part of his upper torso.” Savvy, educational, and if you dance like I do, you can even dance to this track. So next time you jump on Limewire (or whatever) you might want to grab “Army Ants” by Tom Waits…or just download the whole freaking album.

On a different note, we can find the dark side of the internet, only a mouse click from beauty itself. I stumbled upon this gem by accident, while checking out some of those funny, and seemingly original (only because no one you know has them) custom Tee-shirts the sell on line (t-shirts for Geeks or some such clap-trap). The Shiza-gram. This is taking the much talked about “Borat” style humour right to your door. Not only is it disgusting and low-brow, it’s not even original. I have a terrorist (I mean friend) whos been talking about unleashing a shit bomb on the White House for years. Its worthy to note that this particular friend is, infact, a qualified blaster who works with explosives on a daily basis. His dream, is not to blow the bastards up, but to launch a projectile through the walls of the White House (kind of like a 747 or whatever through the Pentagon) with a payload of excrement… the message is the medium.

I will leave you now to ponder.

The Great Lakes Move West (a Pictorial)

“All over the world, it’s the same….it is the same….strangers talk only about the weather” - Tom Waits “Strange Weather”

In what CTV dubbed the “Weather Bomb”, my quaint coastal town was pounded by torrential rain and hurricane force winds yesterday. Of course, I was conveniently out of town, so I give you this pictorial vicariously through the lens of my good amigo Mike’s camera. I would have rushed home to document this myself, but the highway was closed. Fortunately the complete lack of power to Port Alberni excused my absence from the dinner party I was supposed to be attending. (I got to eat the Butter Chicken at a much smaller affair this evening…and it was delicious)

These first 4 are of my yard and of some minor water damage in my basement, altogether lucky considering the proximity of my house to sea level and its location at the bottom of the hill. But the dykes held (so did the queers and the drag queens…but that’s a subject for a different blog).

These last pictures are of the flooded streets of Port Alberni. My friends (and twin brothers) Mike and John braved the ragging flood waters to get these photos, along with Johns four year old daughter (yes, they are the sort of people who chase disasters and danger, and will probably require rescuing at some future date) specifically for your viewing enjoyment.

When A Tree Falls Out of the Forest

I was on my way home from work this morning, after being rained out on the Sunshine Coast (a bit of Wet Coast irony), when traffic came to a sudden halt on Hwy 4, just west of Cathedral Grove (the big trees where everyone stops on their way to Tofino). A giant tree had just fallen on a car. This is the second time that this has happened in the recent past, but they only one I have personally witnessed. Not that I actually saw the tree fall, but through a series of events, I got to be somewhat involved with the action. We were about 20 cars back at the start, but calls for a chainsaw got us three cars from the front pretty close to the beginning of the 2 hour spectacle. We were unable to utilize the saw due to the size of the tree and the complexity of the task, but we were able to help out a bit by providing a hypo blanket. Helpful people in the crowd were able to extract the female passenger of the crushed Audi, and disable the horn, which was a blessed event as a constant blaring during a traumatizing event is not helpful. There even was a plan (an RCMP sanctioned plan) to use our truck to pull the car out, but this was nixed by the arrival of an actual tow truck.

The 2 hour spectacle took place in the pouring rain, but being at the front of the line made the time go by faster, as it gave you a sense of being more involved (or in our case, potentially involved). All manner of equipment and specialized local talent was employed to get the tree off the car. Port Alberni is one place where men have the Know How to cut down large trees. The driver was finally extracted (seriously, but not critically injured), and the tree was bucked up and pushed off the road.

My friend Mike even got interviewed by a video camera toting reporter for CH News (even after we explained that we didn’t see what happened).

Altogether, a weird morning on the way home.

This leads me to another tale. The weird morning on the way to work. This would be last Tuesday, a frosty clear morning. My phone rang ominously at 1:42 am (all phones ring ominously at that hour) and the voice on the other end informed me that this was, in fact, the Victoria Police. Even in my fuzzy state I comprehended the reason for the call, and I simply replied “You found the car”. The crack heads who stole it abandoned it after a short pursuit (never try to evade police cruisers in a 3 cylinder), the suspects fled the scene on foot and are still at large (evading police on foot is a given, considering the fat content of Tim Hortons doughnuts) .The Firefly is now impounded in an ICBC lot somewhere. All the stuff is gone, and according to Kira, there are lingering suspicious smells, but it runs, and my virgin is intact and will be returned.

Hopefully ICBC pays to fix it.

So that’s my update. Enjoy the rain, and watch for falling trees.