September 28, 2005
gaaah
Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! is Amazon’s #26 seller in books, ahead of The Tipping Point and The Da Vinci Code (but well behind Winning Points with the Woman in Your Life One Touchdown at a Time - go figure.) It's far and away their best-selling children's book. I hope they’re mostly being bought as joke presents, but somehow I doubt it.
I will sing of my cat – Russell
See, I meant to link to the vanity-published This is Russell: Russell is a Republican (suitable for children of all ages, the author claims), but the book’s site (russellrepublican.com) has gone down, possibly due to traffic from Andrew Sullivan making fun of it on his blog recently. Anyway, Google’s cache knows all:
The 8 3/4 by 5 3/4 inch book of 48 pages depicts Republican tendencies demonstrated by Russell, a Republican cat. The book also features Russell's friends, a Democrat and an Independent.
A librarian in Douglas County, Colorado explains that there’s more to the dog character than that:
The book does take something of a partisan turn when we meet Russell's friend, Benny, a dog. "Benny is usually looking for a handout. He has a tendency to whine and to moan and to sigh. Often he is anxious that he won't be cared for. He is a Democrat."
The book was presented by the Douglas County Republican Women, the librarian points out (ie. we want citizens to know that we don’t spend our acquisitions budget on this kind of crap).
In fairness to the original concept, though, most cats I’ve known have been passable conservatives, though more of the Bourbon/Romanov type (‘Bring me more champagne, serf!’) than the neocon one.
More popular, as we can see from its Amazon page and violently partisan discussion board, is Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!:
This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland.
Sort of Ann Coulter for the swing-set set. Anyway, make what you will of this:
Customers who bought this book also bought
Customers who viewed this book also viewed
September 21, 2005
September 20, 2005
progress
Covered the kitchen with generous amounts of oil-based primer (with help - thanks, J.!). Remembered, having not experienced it for a number of years, how uniquely frustrating it is it get oil paint out of brushes - bah. Tomorrow: trim and ceiling, and perhaps the walls.
September 18, 2005
signs of progress
The car-sized pile of lumber and jagged concrete that has been sitting on the back patio has now gone into a bright red dumpster, making us feel much more civilized.
September 16, 2005
Ideal for display or home defence
Grapeshot not included.
Description: A Pair of Bronze Dutch Cannons for the VOC (Dutch East India Co.) Marked withe the company crest. £7000.00 (each).
Shipping outside United Kingdom: Quoted at time of purchase
link
INGBIRD CENTER
The second M in Hummingbird, a big sans-serif copper letter about ten feet tall, has fallen off the south wall of the building and hung up on the N in Centre.
That is all.
September 14, 2005
The last watch on the Algobay
On the way to Cherry Beach, or I guess to the ferry terminal, you can see the good ship Algobay tied up at the dock. She’s just to the east of the bridge. No need to hurry to see Algobay, if you want to check her out - she’ll be where she is for a while. You won’t miss her, either – she’s the biggest thing around.
Algobay is a problem for her owners, who may or may not eventually scrap her. Pro: she’s wrecked inside from salt water corrosion to the point that her internal bulkheads collapsed on the Soo a number of years ago; con: she was built to last 30 years, and was only launched in 1978. Someone in a corner office will eventually make a decision, at some point, or then again perhaps not.
Really, she sounds like the Midland, from the Stan Rogers song (They dragged her down, dead, from Tobermory/Too cheap to spare her one last head of steam), poor thing.
In the meantime, as far as I can tell from the boatnerd.com site, she hasn’t budged from the Cherry St. dock since Christmas Day, 2002. Here she is on New Year’s Eve, 2002. Actually, I think she's been around long enough to make it on to satellite images of the city - the ship in the GoogleMaps image looks about right.
Here’s the moral: If you’re a shipowner, and you want somewhere on the Great Lakes to park a worn-out ship while you spend several years getting around to deciding whether it’s more economical to repair her or turn her into razor blades, Toronto will do just fine – it’s much better than taking up valuable space in a real port like, oh, Nanticoke. Toronto’s port is so moribund that a worn-out 34,000-ton ship can just be abandoned to snooze at the dock for any number of years without fear of getting in the way of any worthwhile project.
This is the thriving harbour that we need a federally run harbour commission for, apparently. What do they do all day? (Algobay's still there, sir. A bit rusty.' 'Good work, Smithers - time for lunch.')
When men with torches come for her, let angels come for the waterfront, I guess.
September 13, 2005
East-enders
My new outbound commute (left) is designed to use the least depressing way across the east downtown (King St., for my money). I wish there were lights at King and Queen (it really is an intersection – it’s just west of the Don), but all in all, it’s easy enough.
It goes down Broadview, then along a nice fixed-up Victorian stretch of King East. The route itself can be tweaked a bit to go past a Starbucks and the St. Lawrence Market.
If you’re already at the Market, the Market Gallery has a small exhibit of artifacts made by rebel prisoners after the 1837 rebellion – poetry lamenting Samuel Lount’s hanging, that kind of thing.
Renovation notes: The gas fitter and electricians have come and gone from the kitchen, and in theory the plumber should finish the job today. It will be nice to have a room Actually Finished, which it will be once we finish the painting and tile backsplash.
September 10, 2005
renovation
The out-of-the box Ikea kitchen is mostly installed, and looks beautiful. I'm looking forward to cooking again - we have yet to find pizza out here that meets the standards on the UofT periphery set by places like Cora and Gigi. It's either chain pizza (really expensive for what it is) or tiny perfect expensive gourmet pizza. We need an unpretentious no-nonsense indie place. The legs arrived from Lee Valley for the enormous work table that we have no way of fitting down the basement stairs. With the existing legs still attached, that is. Our first discovery in pre-natal class (started Thursday) is that it's a really good place to network about finding contractors - we seem to have found a drywaller and found somebody else a plumber. The exterior walls in the second-floor front bedroom are stripped of lath and plaster and ready to insulate. Main weekend task: painting the kitchen. We're within reach of having a room actually done, which would be a nice feeling.
JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO SELL
finder’s points to the reason.com blog:
Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.
The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and "sterile," said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.
… Officers are prepared to arrest anyone who joins the march or concert without a credential and refuses to leave, said Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford.
... When the walk first was publicized, participants were required to submit their names, ages, e-mail addresses and home addresses. After some groups accused the Pentagon of using the registration as a recruiting tool for the military, the requirements were changed.
rest here
Leni Riefenstahl, call your office –
September 06, 2005
LABOUR DAYS
A busy weekend saw: the stripping out of the old kitchen door frames and drywalling for the new kitchen cabinets (thanks, Dave!), arrival of all the new appliances, installation of the washer, repair of the laundry room floor, phone, cable , and, as you can see, Internet access.