Category: Good Stuff

Now I remember why I’ve always liked cartoonists’ acumen…

Edmonton Sun columnist Graham Hicks usually starts off his colums every day with at joke or two.  Sometimes great, sometimes groaners, but almost always a joke.  Not today, though.  Today, he started off with something that should be required reading for just about everybody, especially at this time of year.  The author is unknown, but the message is unmistakably clear:

Your alarm goes off, you hit the snooze and sleep for another 10 minutes. He (or she) stays up for days on end.

You take a shower to wake up. He goes weeks without running water.

You call in sick with a headache. He could be splattered with bullets or shrapnel, but keeps moving forward.

You put on your anti-Afghanistan shirt, go meet your friends. He fights for your right to wear that shirt.

You talk “trash” with your buddies that aren’t with you. He may not see some of his buddies ever again.

You walk the street, staring at the pretty girls. He walks the streets, searching for insurgents and terrorists.

You complain about 30C in summer. He wears his heavy gear in 40C heat, not daring to take off his helmet to wipe his brow.

You change your clothes every day. He’ll wear the same army issue for months, but makes sure his weapons are clean.

You’re angry because your class ran five minutes late. He gets told he’s staying in Afghanistan another two months.

You hug your girlfriend every day. He holds the letter close and tries to think of his love’s perfume.

You criticize the government – war never solves anything.

He sees the innocent, tortured and killed by their own, and remembers why he’s fighting.

You see only what the media thinks you can handle seeing. He sees the bodies and blood, lying around him.

You sit and judge him, saying the world is a worse place because of men (and women) like them.

If only there were more like them.

(Author unknown)

Yup, ol’ King Ralph done gone an’ done it agin. The longest serving premier in Canada may be on his way out, but he’s sure not gone yet. Ol’ Ralphie has the Grits, MSM, feminazis and a hoary host of other usual suspects in an utter tizzy after making a risque and Ralphingly off-colour crack about the Librano$’ favourite insult to dogs everywhere, Belinda Stronach. Never mind that the jibe was delivered at a charity roast in Calgary. After all, it’s not like roasts are a place where anybody ever gets mercilessly raked over the coals now, is it? For both of you that don’t already know, here’s the joke:

“And I wasn’t surprised she crossed over – I don’t think she ever did have a Conservative bone in her body. Well, except for one… speaking of Peter MacKay…”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I thought that was damned funny, and apparently so did plenty in the crowd that night, including one woman that came dangerously close to an “I laughed so hard my wine came out my nose” incident. But hey, why let a good raucous joke get in the way of working up a good steam of indignation?

Let’s face it, boys and girls; when Ralph has something in his head, no matter what it is, it’s only a matter of time before it falls out his mouth. And Ralph doesn’t give a tinker’s dam if anybody else can take a joke or not. He never has before and he’s sure as hell not going to start now.

Ralph has been known throughout his entire public life as a man that shoots from the lip. He didn’t tone it down when he was a public servant, so just why does anybody think he’s going to change now that he’s on his way out? For those of you not familiar with Ole King Ralph (almost a third of my traffic comes from the US), here’s a list of some of my favourite Ralphisms (which also show that Ralph doesn’t play political favourites when it comes to barbs):

Ralph on the subject of…

Edmonton v Calgary:
Edmonton isn’t really the end of the world — although you can see it from there.

Former Ontario Premier Bob Rae (NDP):
I think that he’s a very educated person, but he’s a dumb politician.

Former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow (also NDP):
You would never know Roy Romanow was a lawyer because he was a basic down-to-earth individual. I had a lot of time for Roy, notwithstanding our political differences. Roy, I had a lot of time for; Bob Rae, I had no time for, whatsoever.

Quebec:
Quebec is part of Canada as much as a cat in the mouth of a crocodile is a part of the crocodile.
Flipping an environmentalist the bird:
Randy Lawrence ran up on stage where we were all seated … and gave us all the finger. So I gave him the finger back.

Governance:
There’s an old saying in politics. Anyone dumb enough to run for the job probably is too stupid to have it.

People gunning for his job:
Whoever becomes the premier will have a tremendous amount of challenges. That’s why I wake up in the morning and I say: ‘Why am I here?’ It’s because I am not all there.

His other career options:
To go into TV these days you have to be young and pretty. I am neither.

Yup. Mean, nasty American imperialist troops running amok in Iraq, slaughtering the innocent, torturing civilians, generally being bad people. Totally.

A picture really is worth a thousand words, isn’t it? Hat’s off to Celestial Junk for posting this before I did. Behold the unspeakable evil that is the American imperialist crusader in Iraq:

Damn. First Bruce Cockburn grows a brain, and now this. And here I thought all the fancypants types in the entertainment industry were supposed to be all anti-military up the wazoo.

That doesn’t seem to be the case here, though. Canadian-born Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels seems to be the latest in a lengthening line of the supposedly exclusively-left showbiz crowd to yank his cranium out of his colon and say what most of us have known all along:

OTTAWA (CP) – “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels applauded Canada’s participation in the Afghan mission Thursday, saying he’s glad his native country is “back in the world.”

But the Toronto-born Michaels, one of six Canadians being honoured this week with a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for lifetime achievement, had some sharp criticism for the previous Liberal government’s reaction to the September 11 attacks.

It’s almost enough to make you want to have faith in celebrities again.

I like finding funny things in my email. By now, everybody knows about John “check out these cool enemy marksmanship badges” Kerry’s latest meeting of foot and piehole (i.e.: “you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq”), so I won’t bother rehashing it here. Instead, I think I’ll just sit back and have myself a chuckle…

(Thanks, Dave. BTW: anybody know what unit this is?)