Horny teenage hockey players bump Pope out of top slot at CBC News

Which is a remarkable achievement, because His Holiness has completely obliterated any Ukraine news over the past couple of weeks. Nobody even remembers Ukraine anymore at CBC, thanks to the Pope's Tour of Atonement or whatever they branded it as. For a few days we had 24/7 coverage of Papal mea culpas etc., and then the narrative was hijacked by the faction who were pissed off that His Holiness hadn't apologized hard enough, or enthusiastically enough, or comprehensively enough, or something, but Brady Fenlon's wokesters at CBC soon realized this wasn't going anywhere... and OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE SEX SCANDAL AT HOCKEY CANADA!!! I had no idea public money, ie my tax dollars, even went to Hockey Canada! Why? And even more bizzare, how is it the fault of Hockey Canada's executives in Toronto, if a teenager playing hockey in Kamloops commits a sex crime? If you want to blame culture instead of the guy who done it, why blame hockey culture? Isn't "hockey culture" just a reflection of the culture at large? But anyway, I'm trying to focus on how fickle our news gate-keepers are. Ukraine is passe, the Pope has had his day... look for horny teenage hockey players to be over in a few days, to be replaced by the next newsworthy crisis that will take your mind off the fact that the Ukraine war grinds on, Papal apologies don't provide clean drinking water to Indigenous communities, and horny teenage hockey players committing sex crimes will be over after today's Cross-Country Check-Up.

Zelensky PR team tries a lighter touch

Hero of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky finally got his long-overdue Vogue cover. His PR team obviously felt a need to show the softer side of the greatest war-time leader since Winston Churchill. After all, endless pictures of the Z-man marching purposefully from one photo-op to the next in his green T-shirt have become more than a little repetitive. By way of an homage of sorts, Vogue even got American celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz out of cold storage at the cryogenics lab to do the shoot. As you recall, Leibovitz’s famous photo essay of Winston and Mrs. Churchill in the darkest days of the London blitz is credited with turning the tide in England’s favour during WWII. Hopefully she retains her magic touch! Elsewhere in war news, I see where the Z-man has fired both his Defense Minister and Attorney General. Apparently both departments are riddled top to bottom with collaborators. It’s gotta suck when you’re trying to lead your country to victory and the only people you can trust are your foreign advisers.

Eight bagels + one loaf of bread = $30

That's the price of going gluten-free. The Boon Bakery in town specializes in gluten-free baking. The Farm Manager asked me to drop by and pick up a few bagels and a loaf of bread. Grocery shopping is normally her department. I've heard rumours about food inflation, apparently caused by Putin, but I wasn't prepared for thirty bucks! For that kind of money I'd expect the bagels to come with the cream cheese and lox already on. Seems to me that since gluten sensitivity is a health issue, doctors should be able to write prescriptions for gluten-free foods. Then our prescription plan would cover groceries, or at least the gluten-free component. Another brilliant idea from the Think Tank at Falling Downs!

Catholic Indians

Here's a head-scratcher. In spite of the fact that some perverted priests raped them and their children for generations, many Indigenous people remain devout Catholics. It's mainly for them that the Holy Father is taking his tour of Canada this week. They're calling it a tour of penitence. His Holiness is atoning for the depredations visited on Native children by the priesthood, mostly in the "residential school" system. There was an item in the news a few years ago, about the funeral for a priest who had ministered to a Native community in Saskatchewan all his life. They loved him. Apparently not all priests were predatory perverts. Indians attended his funeral in their hundreds, from all over the province. But today we're not allowed to hear about the good priests who were loved in their communities. It's the mantra of our age; cling tight to grievance and nurture it with your last drop of energy. The Pope brings a potential antidote to bitterness, recrimination, and multi-generational trauma. Forgiveness.

Shoulda opened a junk shop...

God knows I have the inventory. Or at least I had it. Most of my inventory is now in the big green bin (from bin there dump that owen sound, in case you guys want to give me a break on the fee for the mention). Yup, 12 cubic yards of mostly useful stuff you might need someday. And what's really f'd up, is I GOTTA PAY TO GET IT OUTTA HERE! There's two perfectly good tents in there. A couple of duct tape patches here and there, but there's refugees all over the world who would see them as an improvement over what they got now. And the cables! Internet ethernet computer to modem to this and that and everything under the sun, there's gotta be at least a mile of cable in there. Remember when you went and paid real money for cable? I remember my old pal Lippert, may he rest in peace, a very down to earth sort, demanding we stop at Staples so he could spent $24 on a critical piece of some sort of cable so his new computer would work. Dude, if you bought a vacuum cleaner or a power saw, would you pay extra for the cord? No! Of course everything these days is cordless. Surprisingly, this old luddite owns a cordless drill he's had for at least 25 years. I was an early adapter of new technology, or at least still somewhat newish. Truth is, I only bought it because it was on sale. That's another pitfall - buying shit just because it's on sale. There's a lot of that in the bin. Shelf brackets, usually two bucks each, on sale for forty-nine cents a pop, so you load up, cause you never know when you might need a shelf bracket. Anyway, the goal of this operation was to open up some space so I can do a little work-shoppy stuff in there. Still need to get rid of the 88 Mustang LX 5.0. Actually quicker than the GT because it didn't have the extra weight of the non-functioning scoops and ground skirts, although I'll admit the GT looks way sexier. There you go. I should have started a junk shop and used car dealership... both things I always wanted to do. That's what happens when you realize you're running out of time.

Tossing your life into a big green dumpster

I'm stunned by how much crap a person can accumulate over the course of a lifetime. The Farm Manager once joked there was 20 dump runs in that garage. She may have been on the low side. I've got some theories about why folks become hoarders. We tend to have been deeply propagandized into the "waste not want not" way of thinking.So if you grew up at the hands of folks who survived The Depression, The War, camps etc, that was a damned good maxim to live by if you were to survive. But that was then; this is now. Now, nobody thinks like that. We've become a Walmart-to-landful economy, and I'm doing my share with this dumpster. I'm tossing out tons of stuff that I might need someday. Or somebody might. Someday. But I'm not tossing everything. Once the nostalia gland is triggered, I want to keep every toy my kids ever got with a Happy Meal. I'm getting better though. I threw out all the kids' Happy Meal toys except for a couple of special ones. Speaking of memory lane, how's this grab you; I found a stash of letters addressed to me in Edmonton. Edmonton! That was in the 70's! I barely remember living there, let alone who might have been writing me. I suppose I could read them and find out, but nah... in the bin they go! Well, some of them anyway. I held a few back just in case I change my mind.

There's a big green dumpster sitting in front of my garage

I'm guessing that's 'cause I ordered up a big green dumpster. In hindsight, I should have ordered the 20 yd bin, but hoaders, like addicts, prefer to minimize their addiction. So I got busy. I figured I should just take a peek in every box I was throwing out. That's how I happened upon that WW1 German Army horse-hair boot-brush. A distant ancestor had left his initials carved in the handle. So of course I have to keep anything with nostalgic value... Which pretty much means I'm gonna have to send that bin back empty!