I will be accused of inventing this story — “Former Canadian Minister Of Defence Asks Canadian Parliament Asked To Hold Hearings On Relations With Alien “Et” Civilizations” — so rather than comment I will merely post the newspaper account below.
This may become the basis for a screenplay as a sequel to “Canadian Bacon.”
OPEN THREAD!
type ‘oprah pomegranate martini’ into google.
Before I do … let me guess … Cabin Girl!
(I was at her place on Thanksgiving … I think I had 10 of them. Can’t really remember any of it. Awesome.)
That is HILARIOUS! They were good, btw…
Boy, if Oprah and Martha Stewart ran the U.S. government, everything’d work great, and we could all drink pom. martinis all day long!
It would definitely be an improvement over what we have!
(Poor BooMan, his hard-hitting political blog has been girl-ified with pink martinis…)
I put up the ad for “The Tender Bar” just for BooMan. It sounds like his kind of book. The author was interviewed on C-SPAN2 yesterday, and he was utterly wonderful and delightful … he grew up in a bar in New York City, and the guys at the bar took him to the beach every day in the summer. Wild story.
What next?
“Canadian Bacon” is one of my favorite “giggle” movies … like “Clueless” and “Airplane” and the rest.
John Candy was such a sweetheart.
You got that one right!!
I’m really excited because CNN keeps reporting on what’s really a rather non-story — inmates escaped from a Yakima, Wash. jail — but they’re pronouncing the city’s name correctly! I grew up in Yakima Valley in Eastern Washington state — then with only 40,000 people surrounded by the Horseheaven Hills — and that name got butchered a lot.
That’s like people who insist(newscasters etc)on pronouncing Nevada wrong…and it just drives me up the wall. People who live in Nevada(I lived there 3 different times)do NOT pronounce it as Ne-vah-da-that is so ladeda sounding…it’s pronounced ‘Neveda’ dammit.
So how should we be pronouncing the name of your fair city? I’ve always heard it as “YAK-ih-ma.”
Horseheaven Hills, what a great name! There’s a wonderful book called Names on the Land, originally published I think in the 1930s or so, that talks about how various places in the U.S. got their names–from people, events, landscape features.
How’s about Bucksnort, Tennessee? :o)
That sounds like a great book.
You’re correct. I’ve heard it pronounced Ya-KEEE-ma.
When I was 17, I went to work for the Yakima Herald newspaper. My city editor was named Click Relander. He was so crusty and tough, but he was the best. I told my friend J.J. Maloney about Click Relander, and he said, “Newsmen. They used to have the greatest names.”
Peace thru Kung Fu.
who are interesting and cute eccentrics and all we USAns get is Bush?
Raise the terror alert: Chavez is buying deadly transport planes and patrol boats from Spain. This cannot be allowed to happen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4472342.stm
Any chance we could get him to invade?
We’ve tried the Canadians, and they’re obviously — as someone said above — too eccentric, And they’re simply too sweet to do the job.
He could do for the nation what he did for Massachusetts! Providing affordable heating oil for the poor!
(He’s kind of nutty, but I’ll take nutty over stupid and evil.)
that Chavez is one bad guy! Making secret deals with Massachussetts congressmen to ensure that poor people in Mass won’t freeze to death with the high cost of heating oil, inciting Pat Whatsisname to making death threats, using the oil profits from his country for programs to help the poor…now he expects us to believe those transport planes have a leitimiate use? Sheesh!
Three key differences between a Bush and a cute eccentric are:
Wow
You go away for a few days, have very limited internet access and all hell breaks loose! Kinda glad I missed the hubbub. Now to recover from 6 hours in the car on I-95….
Dammit!
And here I was worried about us attacking Syria!
Somehow I don’t think a draft will raise the troop level enough to ward off an intergalactic attack. Shit! What to do?
On the other hand….
at least I’m glad that someone is talking about this. These issues are important and can’t be overlooked.
Where’s that confounded bridge?
I mean who here does not think that the republican party has not been infiltrated by aliens from another planet intent on destroying the world via destroying the USA.
Seriously, this is obviously body snatching. Just look at Bill Frist. He looks so pale he must be being eaten from the inside out. Something is not right with him like he is some galactic daze.
And Tom DeLay. You all saw the booking photo. Is that a normal man. I say not. He is possessed in a very strange way. Definitely not human.
And Denny Hastert. Has anyone every seen him smile? Frown? Blink? Possessed by aliens he is.
I rest my case.
Ok, yuk it up about Canada and the UFOs, but let’s consider the possibilities:
(Aside: one of the benefits of going through a rip-snorting mid-life crisis is that you get to discover a lot of new and interesting ideas while reassembling your self-identity.)
I’m the first to admit I have no professional credentials to be practicing psychology, but having said so I wonder if there’s some issue deep in the collective Canadian psychology that they’ve not come to terms with. And I have a sneaking suspicion what it might be:
The popular analogy I’ve heard for Canadian attitudes about living next door to the US is that it’s like “sleeping in bed next to an elephant.” I wonder if the Canadians aren’t coming to suspect that the elephant has gone rabidly mad under GWB and the Republicans, and What the hell are they going to do about it?
Quite a jam to be in, living next door to a heavily armed psycho. Who happens to want your oil. And has shown no qualms about invading other nations when it’s time for another fix. But let’s not talk about it; don’t want to create a row; let’s just trade, trade, trade.
If you read the story it’s not an academic interest in UFOs; it’s all in the context of American desires to launch space-based weapons.
I haven’t followed UFO reports closely since I was a teenager, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s been a big outburst of sightings since 2001, much as there was in the 1950s: To much of the world, we’ve become the new Soviet Union.
To much of the world, we’ve become the new Soviet Union.
Wrong. We’re more reckless. Hence, scarier.
I’ll step up and apologize if I tweaked any Canadian sensibilties. I did’nt intend to. I did read the story and understood it to be about space based weapons and the Canadians fears of it and distrust of Washington. I read somewhere this past year about Washington’s demands that the Canadians contribute to the North American defense shield and Canada’s refusal pissing off Condi and crew. I love Canadians. They deserve some kind of credit for putting up with us as politely as they do. We sure don’t deserve it. Just having some fun.
As to UFO’s… the joke above is at my expense as well cause I’m a true believer. I have a ladder to prove it. It’s waiting in the garage for the day they appear overhead. Shit, I’m climbin’ if they’ll have me. As long as they aren’t passing out pamphlets titled ‘How To Serve Man’ ;o)
You’re dating youself with the “To Serve Man” reference.
And I’m dating myself since I got it.
I’m curious what our Canadian friends think about my Jungian theory. Hopefully I haven’t pissed everybody off: I may need friends across the border if the family has to make an escape a la “The Sound Of Music” if the worst-case scenario plays out, LOL.
Of course, how much you’re dating yourselves depends on whether you’re referring to the Twilight Zone episode, or the story on which it was based…
I plead the fifth, LOL.
Yep.
That makes two of us, or perhaps three? ;o)
You’ve got plenty of company here…
Me, I’m er, uh, a popular culture historian!
Do you have problems with your vehicle suddenly stalling out? Do you ever feel compelled to carve your mashed potatoes into a cylinder with your fork, or take a trip to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming?
(Actually, Devil’s Tower is a very cool place if you ever get a chance to go. Unfortunately, the closest thing I saw to an alien life form there was a big porcupine up a small tree, LOL.)
Manticore on the sci fi channel right now–about Iraq.
My lucky friend Real History Lisa got to see Syriana tonight — here’s her e-mail report: