Last Night

It’s always a blast to step out for food and drinks with our friends from the Tucows office in Starkville, Mississippi,

and last night was no exception. My coworker Darryl and I hung out with

Bill, who was visiting from Starkville and had a blast. We talked about

work, poker, booze, alcoholic Van Halen bass players and even a bit of

politics. Anyone who says that “Red Staters” and “Blue Staters” (or

well, Darryl and I would be, if we were American) can’t get along needs

to get out of their echo chamber for a stretch.

We all agreed that the Bush plan to privatize social security sounds

like a perfect opportunity for financial institutions to gouge people,

which in turn sounds like a perfect opportunity to post this comic:

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We talked for a little bit about tech enclaves and what painful social

scenes places with nine-to-one male/female ratios have. Naturally, the

movie Office Space came up. Bill and I love that movie.

Strangely enough, my fellows in Tucows’ Reasearch and Innovation

department haven’t seen it yet (when I started working at Tucows, Boss Ross

didn’t know what the “Is it good for the company?” sign I posted at my

des referred to). What the hell kind of research group are we? I must

correct this oversight soon.

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We ended up at my favourite watering hole, Smokeless Joe, where they

know me well enough that as soon as I sat down at the bar, the barkeep

said “Sorry Joey, there’s no Black Katt

on tap this evening.” That’s why I love that bar so dearly; they know

me there, and they’ll often turn down the stereo to let me play

accordion for the crowd.

Rick Mercer happened to

be sitting at the bar beside us and we got into a conversation with

him. Mercer, for those of you who don’t know him, used to be on a CBC

news satire show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes and does an occasional special called Talking to Americans,

in which Mercer does “man on the street” interviews in the US that show

how little our friends to the south know about their largest trading

partner with whom they share the world’s largest undefended

border.Americanophile that I am (hey, I’m marrying one, and I’m the

direct descendant of one), it pains me to note that a number of their

politicans have used “I’ve never travelled outside the country!” as part of their campaigns.

Bill asked Mercer if he was the one who fooled  then-Governor

George Bush (he got Bush to comment on his endorsement by Canadian

Prime Minister “Jean Poutine”), to which Mercer replied “yes”. “I’m

glad you didn’t interview me; I might’ve made the same mistake,” Bill

said.

To be fair: can any of my fellow Canadians name the G8 member countries

— we’ll exclude the European Union for the purposes of this question

— and their leaders? (I can, but I’m the smartest accordion player in

the city. I have a level of excellence to maintain.)