Rocketman

I admire the creativity of the mind or minds behind Family Guy, and one of my personal favourites has always been Stewie singing "Rocket Man", lounge-style (time 1:38):



Unbelievably, years later, I have come across a startlingly similar
clip where Shatner(?!?) does the same schtick that Stewie does, but back in the mid '70s.

Is Shatner an honest-to-goodness time traveller? That is the only plausible explanation that I can conceive of... (time 5:02)



P.S. If anyone could tell me how to make blogspot treat embedded youtubes as embedded, rather than opening a new window, I would be in your debt. Addendum: Now, for some reason, the first video is opening on the page, but the second is not. WTF?

Russell Brand: wanker? Part Deux

Previously, in this space, I cast some aspersions on the funniness of Russell Brand, based on his Big Brother's Big Mouth preformances available on youtube.

Recently, an anonymous commenter to the archived post has taken me to task for my critique, and directed me to one of Russell's standup routines, also available via youtube.

I now admit that I was wrong, and was in fact being a bit of a 'tit' (as the commenter cheerfully pointed out).

Russell Brand is funny, after all.

Judge for yourselves! The whole show is segmented into 8 10 minute parts and if you can make it past the first 5 or so minutes, I bet you will be hooked!

"Canada's New Government"

I recently read an article in Harper's Magazine, titled Our Home and Native Brand. It makes public

... a September email exchange between representatives of Natural Resources Canada and Andrew Okulitch, a scientist working at the Geological Survey of Canada in an emeritus capacity. Irwin Itzkovitch is an assistant deputy minister under Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn. Vanessa Nelson is an executive adviser. Okulitch was fired but reappointed two weeks later.

It was very interesting, in that I hadn't realized that Canada had been rebranded.

The jist of it: apparently, early last fall the Harper government mandated that in all government press releases, etc. the term "Canada's New Government" would be used instead of "the Government of Canada".

Of course, the top hit for "Canada's New Government" in google is Steven Harper's homepage (mercifully it wasn't a 'sponsored' link), the Government of Canada. The banner graphic proclaims "Canada's New Government", with a subtitle of (in caps, I am not making this up "GETTING THINGS DONE--FOR ALL OF US")

Currently,the homepage shows a beer-bellied Harper pretending to pay attention as some hired stooge points to a tree or something. Perhaps the next place for some timber extraction?

The message is supposed to be that "Spock" cares about the environment, just like the rest of us.

At least until he wins a majority.

Then, I suspect, we will all be well and truly in trouble.

Have I lost my mojo?

It has been well over a month since my last posting and I have no doubt that I have disappointed my dozens of regular readers. I know this because several (well, two) of my colleagues have made mention of their disappointment in this matter. One colleague even made so bold as to question whether I was still drinking or not!

Well, I am still boozing, but being forced to remain 'dry' on several occasions for several days during my recent vacation certainly clarified for me some of the principal issues (or in the latest corpSpeak, 'opportunities') in my life.

Rather than collapsing into bed and instantly falling asleep, as is my wont, I was granted the rare privilege of going to bed early, then lying awake into the early hours, analysing my life and its meaning (short answer: 42).

Aside from laziness (and I find it very difficult to write these logs, especially the longer the time span between each one), I notice a change in myself, at least temporarily, regarding my world view.

When I first got back from vacation, I had a draft on 'the evils of tourism' already written in my head. As days turned to weeks, however, my indignation faded away.

Now, I am not irritated enough by anything to actually be driven to write. I have a warm apartment, as much cold potable water as I care to drink, and as much acceptable red wine as I care to swill.

I am sure that if I had remained in Canada, and had witnessed the grotesquerie of the Harper attack ads on Stephane Dion, I would have been outraged enough to at least post something.

But I wasn't here for that, and I still haven't watched them. I am saving them for when I enter 'warpath' mode, probably sometime soon, according to the forecasters.

Another election this spring? I would welcome that. I would feel energized again! I don't care how well the Conservatives are polling in Ontario, I know they are weak. And their leader? Especially weak.

Bring it on, to quote Steve's best buddy.

May the least whorish candidate win!