Mélange Adultère: Part One

I turned forty yesterday--at precisely 6:18 p.m., in fact. Stephen Harper's psychic hairdresser would probably wish me to point out that such an evening birth gave me a Leo ascendant, which explains the total lack of humility, subtlety, tact, and dignified reserve that my Capricorn Sun and Virgo Moon would otherwise have the power to lend these writings (and their author). Blame it on the stars.

Remarkably, even as Israel continues to exterminate the vicious, civilization-hating Islamofascists hiding in UN humanitarian convoys and schools, other less important but more amusing things are actually happening. To wit:


Harper's Back, and More Immaterial Than Ever!

It's good to see our prime minister blinking his soporific blink on the nation's political radar screen again. I was afraid that our Boeing-sized leader had suffered an explosive decompression en route between the Golden Dragon's all-you-can-eat luncheon buffet and a Tim Hortons.

In a touching display of the only form of empathy his IBM designers have apparently made him capable of showing, Harper revealed that he found the extent of current Canadian unemployment "troubling"--leading me to wonder whether Captain Smith is recorded as having found it "distressing" to learn of his ship's impending trip to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Despite it all, though, Mr. Harper believes that Canada will soon emerge "stronger than ever" from the crisis. Well obviously: with 71,000 full-time jobs lost last month, a number the article tells us was "far worse than economists had expected", Canada may very soon achieve the kind of unemployment and resultant widespread poverty that really builds character--the kind of character my grandmother ended up with after the Great Depression, the kind that moved her to vote CCF/NDP for much of her life.

In any case, Harper's admirable sang froid in the face of a looming disaster that may reduce thousands of Canadians to the expedient of subsisting on Alpo but will likely not incommode His Serene Red Neckness beyond the guilt-driven impulse to tip his country-club parking valet a Toonie rather than the customary Loonie should be an inspiration to us all.