Michael Sona on Twitter
September 27, 2015
You’ll remember Michael Sona as the young Conservative operative who grabbed a ballot box from an on-campus polling station at the University of Guelph and tried to run away with it. Later he became the only one convicted in the Robocalls investigation, sentenced to nine months of jail time and a year’s probation.
This Twitter series appeared online today:
Michael Sona on Twitter, 27 September, 2015
So Trudeau says CDA should send winter aid to Syrian civilians months ago. CPC attacks him, and says we only need to bomb ISIS. 1/4
Cda’s possibly bombed more civs than ISIS fighters, & now govt says we need to send winter aid to Syrian civs. 2/4 http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/up-to-27-iraqi-civilians-may-have-been-killed-in-canadian-airstrike-pentagon-document-reveals-1.3213917 …
So while Syrian civilians have died from exposure & possibly Cdn bombs, govt finally decides to do what Trudeau said months ago. 3/4
All considered, on this issue, Trudeau frankly comes off as much more intelligent and forward-thinking than Harper. 4/4
A simply brilliant ad
September 12, 2015
This simple ad has been turning up on National Newswatch quite often of late. It puts me in mind of that Apple ad where the young woman broke the blue screen. It’s that good.
http://ca.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/latest/34517000/quitbit/mount-pleasant-group-of-cemetaries
Floor Refinishing: Day 2
August 7, 2015
What more do you need? That’s the story.
Update, 21 August, 2015:
We moved the sofas, kitchen table and the rest back in this afternoon. A contractor who happened to pass through at the start of the process had told me that it would be tight to get the job done in two weeks. It was.
Lightning strike problem
June 11, 2015
A bolt of lightning on the afternoon of June 10th seems to have knocked out a component on our home Internet service, so I posted this here in case anyone is trying to contact any Croskery family members by email.
UPDATE: 11:47. Looks as though a tech is needed, and has been requisitioned. Don’t know when he’ll get to the farm to make repairs.
UPDATE: June 12, 5:00 p.m. Power restored: the Bell Canada guy found a couple of new wires on the big cable out at the road and announced he’s putting in for a new service to Mom’s phone. After two afternoons of work the WTC Internet guy has replaced everything from the pole to the router, but the family Apples are back online. My son’s auto lift in his shop also popped its breakers, though it seems otherwise undamaged.
Lightning is hard on communications equipment, but the TV satellite feed survived.
Why you always need to get the x-ray
May 12, 2015
My GP figured it was gout, as did everyone who looked at my ailing toe. Wrong joint, though. The Internet was a bit vague on the subject as gout is almost always on the main joint of the big toe, not the one out by the toe nail. But two weeks after the initial diagnosis of gout the bloodwork came back negative and the swelling wasn’t going away on its own, so Bet insisted upon an x-ray.
We ran into Bet’s GP working Emergency at Smiths Falls, Dr. Raphael Shew. Shew has a reputation as a fine diagnostician. He said it looked like gout all right, but he’d see after the x-ray. A half-hour later he came into the room beaming. “Well that’s interesting. There’s a fracture there, all right.” He drew me a sketch to illustrate it.
It should be good as new in six to eight weeks of confinement in a firm-soled shoe. That’s a lot easier to take: a fracture (a young man’s injury, the result of haste or stupidity) over gout, the affliction of some old guy nearing the end of the tunnel.
No wonder the damned thing kept hurting and even getting worse. Off to recovery…
I dug Dr. Shew’s sketch out of the wastebasket.
Godwin’s Law, Justin Bieber variant
April 14, 2015
A time-honoured principle of Internet discourse is Godwin’s Law, which declares an argument lost the instant that the opponent resorts to a comparison to Hitler and/or the Holocaust.
Last week at the trial of Canadian Senator Mike Duffy the prosecuting attorney Mark Holmes attempted to badger his witness, former Senate Clerk Mark Audcent, on the topic of Duffy’s highly questionable claim of residence in Prince Edward Island.
Holmes suggested that becoming a senator doesn’t suddenly make you a resident of that province, you need to have already been a resident. To further his point, he raised the Senate requirement that a senatorial candidate must be at least 30 years old to be a senator. And this is when he brought up Bieber.
“(Justin) Bieber,” Holmes said, “is 21 years old. If the Governor General (were) to appoint the Canadian singer to the Senate tomorrow, would he become 30?”
“Of course not,” Audcent replied.
Our language cries out for a word for this fatuous use of the beguiling Bieber’s name. Bieber’s Law sounds more like a TMZ headline, followed by photos of police lines and luxury cars in seedy places. Bieblaw won’t stand the test of time. Perhaps it should be deliberately obscure, like Godwin’s. We’ll have to name it after the prosecutor, or maybe even Duffy’s Law.
No, it has to be Holmes. But the apostrophe’s placement (Holmes, Holmes’, or Holmes’s) would use up all of the air in the discussion, lessening the term’s value. How about The Law of Holmes? The Holmes Law? Reductio ad Bieberium?
Feel free to offer alternate suggestions as comments below.
My friend Tom lives in Southern Pennsylvania on a large wooded lot. He sent along the following account of his attempt to live-trap a groundhog whose digging imperils the earthen dam which holds his pond in place above a creek.
On Mon, Apr 6, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Tom Stutzman wrote:
The groundhog that last year took up residence under our barn came out of hibernation last week and has been foraging on the lawn regularly. Having excavated a den under the 2 foot thick stone bearing wall of the 300 year-old building, and having piled mounds of dirt on both sides of same, I resigned myself to evicting him. As a “live and let live” guy, I figured the large “Hav-a-Hart” live trap would be the solution. I could simply load him into the bed of the truck and release him on the other side of Nolde Forest. This, even though his attempt to find a new home could very well have him run over on State Road 625, along which many a mammal meets its maker.
A few days ago, I scattered half of an apple on the lawn below the barn and near his den. The dozen thin slices didn’t get a chance to turn brown in the sun before he had eaten every one.
This morning I repeated the offering, but introduced the baited trap. Friggin’ groundhog ate the trail of sliced apple all the way to the trap door as I watched from the kitchen with binocs and mumbled my best Bill Murray commentary (see Caddyshack, the movie). He stuck his head just inside to get a piece, then returned to the den for a short nap. Now addicted, temptation had him return for a more thorough inspection of the strange box which included a walk-around. He seemed to take careful note of the large cache of fruit on the trigger amidship.
After yet another retreat he couldn’t help himself any more and lost his fear. He entered the trap and tripped the doors, but because he is a rather large fellow, the entry door hit him on the rump, thereby not allowing the lock to engage. The rascal grabbed a final section of apple, backed out, and in total defiance of the gods, ate it right there at the door. Then he stood on his hind legs and flashed a middle claw towards the house.
Where’s my ammo?
You learn that a TV series viewed on a laptop without commercials is a highly enjoyable form of entertainment/addiction which rather reminds me of the scifi image of brain implants connected to an electric charge leading to isolated individuals plugging in and wasting away until death.
Rafe Mair’s column in The Tyee
March 23, 2015
Rafe Mair offers a very well researched essay on some elements of Justin Trudeau’s recent speech.
the Walnut Diary 