Rant and Roll

I could do this all day long

So.

Of late, Canadian politics have been going through one heck of a WHAT THE CRAP IS THIS!? phase.

Toronto’s mayor is smoking crack, and when he’s not doing all of the drugs, he’s firing all of his staff.

Our senators are being audited up the yin yang due to their outrageous expenses.

The Prime Minister’s (now former) chief of staff cut a $90,000 personal cheque TO ONE OF SAID SENATORS, before resigning after the entire country found out about what he’d done.

SPOILER: The country wasn’t pleased.

MPs are now leaving the (ruling) Conservative Party, while others are being welcomed back – because HEY! It turns out that in the end they didn’t need to comply with that breathalyzer?

Good grief.

Oh, and yesterday it was revealed that Nigel Wright – the aforementioned former chief of staff to ol’ STEVIE HARPS (our PM) – had control of a secret fund while he was working in the Prime Minister’s Office.

This was, of course, at the same time that he cut the now infamous $90,000 “personal cheque” to disgraced Senator Mike Duffy.

Damage control. UR DOING IT RONG>

Now, the bright side of this last (bonkers) revelation, is that after it came to light, #PMOSecretFundPurchases began trending on twitter.

People immediately started coming up with the funniest (and wittiest) jokes about what this fund was actually being used for.

Now, being the HUGE Canadian political nerd that I am, I couldn’t stop myself from joining in on the fun.

So may I present to you, what just may be, my finest work to date.

Disclaimer: This probably won’t make sense to anyone who doesn’t live in Canada, or follow our politics.

To everyone else – ENJOY!

Say Cheese!

On Monday night Marc and I walked up to London Drugs to get some photos developed.

Can you believe this is actually still a thing?

I barely remember life before digital cameras – a time where you had “rolls” of film, that, once processed, were delivered in an envelope with a set of “negatives.”

How utterly quaint!

Now that we live in the age of the duck-faced selfie, you might be hard pressed to find someone under the age of fifteen (maybe even twenty) who would even know the definition of “negative,” let alone what one looks like.

Excluding, of course, hardcore hipsters, who walk around with their clunky Polaroid cameras, not-so-secretly wishing that real life itself could be viewed through a sepia tone filter.

I am, of course, just waiting for that one enterprising hipster who will start carting around a Rand Collins (you know, the cameras with the curtain, and the post-shot plumes of smoke), and who will always be yelling at their bored-looking girlfriend to “WATCH THE BIRDY!”

Because that will be great.

Anyways, to get back to my original story, on our way back home we walked past this hair salon:

This has got to be the most fun place to work, in the history of places to work.

If I wasn’t so suspicious of what actually consititutes LIVE DJs, I would probably have to go in one day and scope out the joint myself.

Although, any attempt at reconnaissance on my part would probably end poorly. I’d be there, waiting on an eyebrow waxing, all IF THIS ISN’T THE NEW DAFT PUNK I’M OUTTA HERE!

And they’d be all – WHO IS THIS CHICK?

And then I would end up having this done to me:

What?

How?

WHAT COULD THIS POSSIBLY MEAN?

If any of you peeps out there are esthetically inclined, please, I beg of you, explain this “special effects” phenomenon!

Oh, and speaking of complete confusion –

The other day I was out on a lunch walk-about with my terrific friend Katie (she being in hot pursuit of a fab dress to wear to the many weddings she will be going to this upcoming summer) when we came across this outside of Forever XXI:

Now, individuals who have been reading this here blog for many moons will know that I have a long-standing love/WTF relationship with this store.

I have procured a number of lovely pieces from its many sales racks, but more often than not I am overwhelmingly mystified by the majority of the vestments on display within the store.

In short: EVERYTHING IS CRAZY.

I mean, just look at this poster.

LOOK!

This woman is literally wearing animal-print diaper pants.

If someone asked me to name this garment, I would answer, “Depends.”

They are crazy and I don’t understand why anyone would want to walk around outside, in the daylight, looking like they had freshly filled their drawers.

THIS IS NOT A GOOD LOOK FOLKS.

I have no hard feelings either way towards this whole “bralet” trend, suffice to say that it’s not really my cup of tea, but heck if I will trample on someone’s rights to sport a seven dollar, studded bra top.

Unless, of course, it’s sags all the way down to their ankles.

Then we’ll need to talk.

I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba I’ve got his money.

Because, well, sometimes it must be done.

Take me home, country road

Do you ever get homesick for the different places in which you have lived?

I do.

Edinburgh 226 — Marc’s and my hostel in Edinburgh.

Last week I was chatting with our interim receptionist, a lovely young lass named Louisa. She being a native-Londoner, and myself a self-professed anglophile who lived in Jolly Ol’ England (BAH) in 2009, it was natural that our conversation turned towards the things that we missed most about life in the UK.

That morning we lamented about how much we missed GREGGS, a British chain bakery (and the place to procure the BEST 3 for 1£ egg tarts you will ever sample in your ENTIRE LIFE.)

As I walked back to my office I thought about all the things that I miss most about the different cities, that at one point or another, during my short twenty-eight years, I have called “home”.

Here are two of them:

Birmingham.

Cheap groceries.

Oh how do I miss thee! Three big blocks of (GOOD) cheese for five pounds? A massive box of cereal for ninety pence? A dozen free-range eggs for one pound? Organic veg for all but nought?

WHY ARE YOU SO BAD AT THIS CANADA?

Ease of travel.

“Oh hey! Want to go to Bath today? How about Edinburgh next weekend? What about Switzerland for Christmas?

“Hmmm, I don’t know…”

“It will cost us next to nothing, and we will be there in a matter of hours.”

“LET’S DO IT.”

All the candy.

Seriously, walk into a Tesco and IT IS EVERYWHERE. Aisle, after aisle of just the most amazing junk food you have ever encountered.

You can buy different flavoured marshmallows.

And if you like marshmallows as much I do, THEY WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

And it is glorious.

Rugby.

I sure do like me a professional sportsman with cute bum.

Or as Marc was one to say, “Could you stop taking photos of that guy please?”

Classic.

Halifax.

Friendly people.

Seriously, the nicest people you will ever meet (I should probably say SOME of the nicest people) live on the east coast of Canada.

Sometimes I miss the easy, everyday interaction with people who just want to really, truly find out how you are doing.

Bars that have live celtic music.

This point needs no elaboration.

Also this:

Ease of travel.

A little different from Birmingham, in Halifax proper you can pretty much walk anywhere (weather permitting, of course.) In the dead of winter is it unlikely that you want to be on foot going anywhere, lest you freeze to death, trapped in a massive snow bank, or get carried away in a hurricane.

But in the summer?

It’s glorious.

…

On a completely different note, I feel like I’m going slightly mad from watching so much MI-5.

I was taking the skytrain yesterday, and there was a half-drunk frappacino under my chair, and all I could think was, “I’M SITTING ON TOP OF A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON.”

Yeesh.

I should probably give it a rest, and allow my life to be influenced by other things.

Although I sure do want to be spy.

I also find it weird how just watching this show totally ramps up my homesickness for the UK, despite the fact that it regularly rips out my heart, and gives me massive anxiety over the course of both episode and series’ arcs.

What about you dudes?

Do you folks watch MI-5?

And what cities do your hearts call out for?

I want to hear all about them.

Big things, little things, everywhere a thing thing

Things! Things! Things!

There are so many things of which we must speak!

So let’s get cracking…

Bad McDonald’s ads.

These just squick me right out.

I know much of this is due to the fact that I am (at the base of it all) an immature degenerate (seriously dudes, whatever veneer of sensibility and maturity I manage to project is shellacked on with a trowel EVERY MORNING) BUT –

I cannot be the only one who thinks this, right?

I mean, who chose these descriptors? Yes, sex sells BLAHBLAHBLAH, but when I am eating your crappy fast food, the last, LAST thing on my mind is getting down and funky.

In fact, I’m pretty sure my feelings are literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of that.

And if it isn’t when I started eating said foodstuffs, it certainly is by the time I’ve finished. The end of a McDonald’s meal is always defined by the mild, yet lingering aftertaste of self-loathing, and the enduring curiosity as to whether anyone will ever again find me attractive.

(At least in the non-ironic sense.)

Don’t worry – I make my own bed. I know what I’m getting myself into, and yet, I NEVER STOP DOING IT.)

The long and short of it is – these ads are terrible and they make me uncomfortable for the thirty seconds or so I have to wait for my train to take me home.

AND THAT IS TOO LONG.

Why would you buy that?

People who live in Vancouver are officially insane.

I mean, who in their right mind would pay THAT MUCH MONEY for zero square footage? And what is even four hundred square feet?

Is there a place for you to hang your hammock, or does that cost more?

I can only assume that this arrangement has people peeing off of their (miniscule) balconies, and showering solely on days that it rains.

(Luckily this is Vancouver, so that averages out to quite a few cleaning days per year.)

Plus –

FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS for EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY SQUARE FEET!?

My head hurts.

Someone get me something TENDER and RIPE.

Just kidding!

Watch it.

After seeing this watch on Jubilant Sea’s blog there was nothing in my power that I could do to stop myself from buying it.

BECAUSE IT IS JUST THE BEST OF LIFE.

It has a map!

A wonky map of the world!

I could wear the saddest, least colourful outfit in the world, and as long as I was wearing this watch, I would feel like a main stage player at Paris fashion week.

(I don’t really know what that means, but I’m sticking with it.)

Wedding dresses.

So I am in quite a few weddings this summer because all the people that I know and love are getting married which is SO EXCITING.

And as such, I need to procure some vestments that I may wear while I witness these many exchanges of rings and vows, etcetera etcetra.

Today on my lunch break I managed to wrangle TWO dresses – one for my sister in-law’s wedding in August, and one for my sister’s wedding that is coming up SO SOON at the beginning of July.

The latter dress is one with which I have been enamored for many moons, after walking by Club Monaco a bagillion times and swooning every time I saw it in the window display.

I tried to hold out as long as I could, but today I caved and tried it on and I LOVE IT SO MUCH GUYS.

Seriously, I just love it.

SO MUCH.

…

In other news, for the first time since 1994 I have a weekend with absolutely nothing planned, which THANK GOODNESS, because I have my half-marathon in three very short weeks, and if I’ve going to run a sub-1:30 I better get back on the training path AND QUICK.

IT’S TIME TO GET SERIOUS.

In other great, GREAT news (concerning the run), I have already raised $1,035 for Big Sisters, and counting! I am running for the organization, and all the proceeds raised go directly to helping match new Bigs with the current waitlist of Littles.
If you are interested in learning more about our efforts, you can do so here.

Otherwise, I plan on doing nothing but eating a lot of Nutella and watching an entire season of MI5.

Is it just me, or does Lukas North get hotter the second time around?

Just me?

Bueller?

Happy Friday you beauty cats!

I wish for you nothing but greatness, and awe.