Occasionally Wright

This and That

So much to write about and so little time. Who would have thought my day off would my busiest day of the week?

First, from CBC PEI:

British potato farmers are protesting the inclusion of the term 'couch potato' in the Oxford English Dictionary on the grounds that it's demeaning to the generally healthy tubers. Note that CBC PEI doesn't have a 'Weird News' section so is presumably to be taken seriously. 

Also from the CBC:

Halifax police busted a home delivery drug trafficing ring. Apparently the highly organized dealers were making hundreds of deliveries per week. 15 arrests were made and a variety of narcotics were seized as well as cash and cars. Just when you think small business is about to take off in the Maritimes the authorities step in and crush the entrepreneurial spirit. Actually, someone should check to see if these guys got an ACOA grant for small businesses. 2-1 odds they did.

Back in Ottawa:

Brad Sucks is launching a professionally pressed album tomorrow. It's been available for free on his site to download for ages and you've been able to get a homemade burned copy for just as long but the people have asked for the real deal and he's delivering. Nice of him to coordinate the launch with my birthday tomorrow.

More news later today hopefully...

This is Gonna Hurt...

Is it bad when you go to a dentist because your new dental plan just kicked and in and his reaction after looking at your X-rays and mouth is "Does the phrase deep shit mean anything to you?"

Hello root canal.

Great guy though. When he saw that my last dentist was in Hunter River, PEI he was obliged to point out he practiced in Souris back in the day. Yes, he knows Dr MacLean, our family dentist in Summerside. Apparently when he moved to Souris PEI had just closed its last one room school house and his office was in the process of installing one of those fancy new rotary phones which replaced the hand cranked model. That was 1972.

Over Dose

Two months after being launched in Ottawa how are Dose and Metro (two free daily papers) doing? Is tough to say. I've pretty much stopped reading both. Metro takes itself too seriously and Dose doesn't take anything seriously. I gave up on Metro pretty quick but have read Dose about dozen times and found that it ha all the depth of a Paris Hilton interview. It reminds me of Tribute and Famous- the free magazines you get at the movie theatre that are 100% pure uncritical filler.

A quick examination of the ratio of Dose to Metro copies that litter the street, sidewalks and bus floors leads me to believe that either Dose is much more popular or that Metro readers actually keep their copies and aren't as apt to litter as Dose readers.

Overheard on the Bus

"I hadn't seen any goths for a while but now they're all over the place."
"Yeah, I know. What's up with that?"
"I read someplace that there are 1000,000of them in Ottawa."
"Wow, that's a lot."
"Yup."
"I read that Ottawa has more gays than any other city. We're the San Fransisco of Canada."
"Really?"
"Yeah- there are 250,000 gays and lesbians in Ottawa."
"How many people are there in Ottawa again?"
"750,000. So that means 1 in 3 is gay."

I couldn't care less if there are 100,000 goths and 250,000 homosexuals in Canada. It just frightened me that those number are so incredibly wrong-sounding and neither of the two people involved in the conversation questioned them at all. If they're right, and I'm pretty sure they aren't, close to half the population of Ottawa would be either gay or goth (assuming there isn't a lot of overlap between the two subcultures which there very well could be). How does that sound reasonable to anyone?

It's not the numbers that bother me- it's the fact that these two people who apparently accept anything they hear as fact will be allowed to vote in the impending federal election.

Tulip Festival Concerts

The Tulip Ferstival concert lineup has been announced and it's looking good. It's available here in a nice barely readable poster form or you can scroll down the page for the individual artist blurbs (did you know that Celtae is provocative? Me neither). Or you can just get the hightlights here. Please forgive me if I don't include good bands I've never heard of.

For just $25 you can see:

• The Tea Party

• The Amanda Rheaume Band (I've heard good things)

• David Wilcox (preceeded by a bunch of other blues artists I've never heard of)

• David Miller (Blues artist who sounds familiar)

• Sue Foley (supposedly the best of Ottawa's female singers which makes her really good if she tops Kathleen Edwards, and to a lesser extent Alanis Morisette and Avril Lavigne)

• The Joel Plaskett Emergency (an awesome band from Nova Scotia)

• Lowest of the Low (supposedly legendary- I've never heard of them, which means nothing)

• The Sadies (I've never heard them but have heard good things)

• Jimmy George, Glangarry Bhoys, Celtae and Sons of Scotland (worth going to just to see Sons of Scotland)

• Shawn Desman (not my style but good at what he does)

• Eric Eggleston (plays a lot of Ottawa pubs)

• Sarah Harmer

• Jeremy Fisher (sounds interesting)

• Nath Wiley and the Big Time Spenders (from PEI)

• Alpha Yaya Diallo, The Mighty Popo and various other world music artists (different and highly rated)

• Ron Sexsmith

• Hawksley Workman and the Wolves

Now all I need to do is a figure out how to have most of those evenings off.

Spring Cleaning?

In just 4 short days Ottawa has gone from still being mostly covered in snow and having the streets still lined with massive banks of grime coated ice and sludge to being close to snow free. You'd almost think it was April.

The upside is that spring is finally here. The downside is that the Tulip Festival doesn't start for another five weeks which means we have about 4 1/2 weeks until the NCC and the City of Ottawa do their annual spring sanitizing and clear the national capital of all of the rubbish that's been accumulating under the snow all winter long. The weather might be fantastic but all the melting snow really does is show what slobs we are in Ottawa. The amount of trash on the ground is unbelievable.

Best Kept Secret in Ottawa

Did you know that there's a sugar shack in the middle of Ottawa. It's true, and it happens to be pretty much across the street from my apartment. As far as Action Vanier (the proprietors of the operation) know it's the only operational sugar shack in the world that's within the heart of a city. They have a few hundred trees tapped and produce high quality maple syrup and maple products that they sell out of the log cabin. You can also get an all-you-can-eat breakfast featuring pea soup, pancakes, bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, hash browns and coffee cooked up by the volunteers. It's a bit pricey but the maple toffee you get at the end makes up for it, plus you can put all the fresh syrup you want on your pancakes.

If you're interested the Vanier Sugar Bush Festival runs from April 4 until April 12.

People That You Meet

As I was standing at the bus stop on the way home from the grocery store yesterday evening I was listening to a Watchmen cd and minding my own business. There was a guy standing behind me but I didn't really pay him any attention. As I turned to look down the street he caught my eye and started talking to me so I turned off the cd so I could hear him. He pointed to my case of Diet Coke and said:

"Do you notice a difference in taste between Coke and Diet Coke?"
"Definitely. I can't stand Diet Coke so I don't drink it. This is for my girlfriend."
"Well the thing is, it has aspartame in it and I think that might cause cancer."
"Really? I guess everything causes cancer these days."
"I'd be careful if I were you. It takes 20 years of studies to figure out if something causes cancer and aspartame hasn't been studied for that long yet."

At this point his bus showed up so he just turned to me and said "Good luck." I can only assume he meant "Good luck not giving cancer to your girlfriend by feeding her aspartame laced Diet Coke." Thanks buddy, I appreciate the concern.

Lebanese Exodus

One of my co-workers resigned yesterday for "family reasons." It wasn't long before everyone knew that the "family reason" was that his entire family is picking up and moving back to Lebanon to participate in the anticipated liberation and elections that should follow a Syrian withdrawal. Rumour has it a whole lot of Lebanese Canadians from Ottawa (and presumably the rest of the country) will be heading back to their homeland. It'll be interesting to see what kind of a feel the annual Lebanese Festival has in Ottawa this summer. Will it be smaller this year with so many people gone or will it be bigger than ever in an effort to raise money and awareness for the new Lebanon? It's hard not to respect their dedication to the cause. It's also hard to wonder who's going to be running all of the very good shawarma, donair, pizza shops that are institutions in places like Halifax and Charlottetown while they're away. And I mean that in the very best way possible. I would seriously miss the food if they all left and didn't come back.

Bus Phone Talkers

Talking loudly on the bus is one thing. Talking loudly on a phone is another. Not only is it rude to the people around you on the crowded bus but it's incredibly inconsiderate from the caller's perspective if you decide to broadcast your side of the call to every occupant on the bus. Loud phone talkers are pretty much the most obnoxious people on the bus so it's pretty easy to dislike them. Loud phone talkers who speak in a different language on the other hand are just outright frustrating because they have that smug "I can talk as loud as I want because I know there's a pretty good chance nobody else on this bus has a clue what I'm saying" attitude. I hate it when they're right.