Month: December 2003

The music blog Switching to Glide (named after the Kings song of the same name) is the current host of Carnival of the Canucks, which is:

a weekly roundup of the best posts from Canadian blogs. Carnival of the Canucks is a weblog collaboration design to gain exposure for blogs and posts you may not have seen during your regular week’s readings. The Carnival will be hosted at a different blog every week. Each week’s host blogger is responsible for gathering their favorite posts and posting their Carnival on Tuesdays.

Carnival of the Canucks is modeled on Carnival of the Vanities and Carnival of the Capitalists, so have a look at those if you need more info.

This week’s inaugural edition has a theme: The $6.99 Breakfast and covers all manner of goodies by all manner of Canadian Bloggers, some you undoubtedly know, and some you might have never read before.

This week’s edition was compiled by David “Ranting and Roaring” Janes, Mike “The Campblog” Campbell and Alan “GenX at 40” McLeod.

Next week’s edition, the just-in-time for Christmas edition, will be compiled by the proud Canadian pictured below:

Cue the stereo screams from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Kathy shaking her fists at Heaven, crying out “Dear God, not Accordion Chump!” and Deenster, her face buried in her hands, asking “Isn’t his ego already big enough?”

But seriously, folks, it’s a honour to be asked to host next week’s Carnival of the Canucks. If you see a particularly noteworthy blog entry written by someone based in Canada between now and next Tuesday, let me know, either via the comments for this post or by email. I’ll add it to an extra-special category that I’ll create just for this occasion.

American military training produces fine soldiers, but the euphemistic and managerial way in which they are taught to speak certainly drains all poetry from their language. The New York Times, in the article U.S. Officers Display the ‘Rat Hole’ Where Hussein Hid, quotes Colonel James B. Hickey, who led the raid that resulted in the capture of Saddam “Scruffy” Hussein:

“From a military point of view, if you lop the head off a snake, the snake’s not going to be so viable after that,” he said.

It gets the point across, but Arma virumque cano it ain’t.

Perhaps I should try some mil-speak flirting with The Redhead:

“Please rendezvous with this officer for a dinner sortie, to be followed by accordion operations, the deployment of wine and dancing maneouvres. Your pants will not be so viable after that.”

Self-righteous neo-luddism rears its ugly head: The Guardian’s George Monbiot, favourite whipping boy for warbloggers, conservabloggers and bloggers who’d have called Darth Vader a “liberal nancy-boy”, has managed to get up my centrist nose with an op-ed piece titled A Weapon With Wings. In the article, Monbiot says that we should be mourning, not celebrating, the upcoming centenary of the Wright Brothers’ flight.

Really, George, if you want to talk about technological advances that have caused suffering, you might as well go back to first principles and blame hay (which enabled year-round horse travel), the wheel, fire or writing.

I haven’t got time to comment on the ridiculousness of his article. Unlike Monbiot, I have a real job. But go ahead: read it and take in the journo-guano, if you dare.

If George doesn’t want airplane blood on his hands, he can feel free to give me any frequent flyer points he’s accumulated. I’m sure I can put them to good use.