ISSUE 08-20

Seems like overkill, if you ask me...
POLITICALLY INCORRECT COMICS




FRIDAY RANDOM 10 (ON THURSDAY!)



Five-foot-one,
Eyes as cold as stone,
Topped off by that hard blackened helmet,
And I'm haunted by the freakish size of Nancy Reagan's head,
(No way that thing came with that body)

Sea of Love - Cat Power
Nancy Reagan's Head - Mission of Burma
What If I Came Knocking - John Mellencamp
Long Road To Ruin - Foo Fighters
Barracuda - Heart
Mass Romantic - The New Pornagraphers
The Lemon Song - Led Zeppelin
Hatchet - Yo La Tengo
Stars In The Sky - The Northern Pikes
Land Of 1,000 Dances - Wilson Pickett


HOT & NOT: SUMMER 2008

HOT - Dinosaur museums
There’s a world-class paleontology museum in little Drumheller, Alberta? Who knew? Okay, every parent of a kid over the age of five, except me. That place is… the straight-up wackshizzle, if I’m using that slang properly?

HOT - Burgeoning Irish-themed chain restaurants
This was the other great thing about Drumheller. There was this Irish place that served an awesome Guinness stew and fantastic fish and chips, two dishes that I suspect are rarely, if ever eaten in Ireland, but, whatever. And I can’t believe the name they came up with for the place – O’Shea’s Pub? Where would you pull that from? A magic 8-ball?



NOT - Complaining about the weather
Part of a larger theme, my mother having nothing good to say… about the weather this summer. Now that she is in her mid-sixties, it means that she rarely leaves her condominium anymore, because it’s so damn hot/cold/windy/about to rain/humid/dry/cloudy/sunny. If you asked her, I’m certain she would say the last summer with good weather happened in 1948. And even then, it was 'no great shakes', eh?



NOT - Looking for a motel on a long weekend
This year, the Joey family was not to be constrained by things like planning, and reservations, and the sinking feeling we’ll be sleeping in the van tonight. No, we liked to be loose, we liked to ride the ragged edge, as it was. Yeah, screw that. One night, we ended up staying in this Bates-ish motor hotel in Hebert, Saskatchewan. The owners were very nice and totally harmless, but our next-door neighbors were a bunch of cow-tipping, date-raping yahoos who like to play “dodge ball” in their room at two in the morning. Arseclowns.

HOT - FortWhyteAlive
I took Li’l Joey out there for a bike ride last month. We pedaled our way along some very nice paths, and climbed a hill to find twenty bison, grazing in a field. It turned into one of those moments of awe and wonder that occur so rarely when out with your child. Inspired, on the way home I stopped in and bought six bison burgers at the store. Li’l Joey loved hers, but just wait until I tell her what it really was! Oh, it’s fun being a parent…

NOT - Playing. FastandLoose. WithSyntaxAnd. Grammar:
FortWhyteAlive used to be merely the Fort Whyte Centre, which seemed clear enough to me. But that’s too white bread in this scintillating age of text messaging and questionable sentence structure. It’s everywhere now. My employer’s Communications Office uses “Progressive. Thinking For Tomorrow”. It’s example number 87 in their growing portfolio of ham-fisted hackery. Rest assured, when they think they’re using something trendy, the trend is loooong over. Kind of like those Bears on Broadway.



HOT - My Gym Partner Is a Monkey
If you are a parent and dread watching most kids' shows, this is a break from all of the dragons and ponies and Zachs and Codys living their allegedly 'Suite' Lives. MGPIAM is loaded with clever grown-up jokes. Don’t miss it. I speak from experience – when Li’l Joey was about three, she kept watching this show called Lunar Jim, which was a spun-off and far inferior cousin of Builder Bob (parents nod in recognition). I heard the Lunar Jim theme song so often that I changed the chorus:

Lunar Jim!
Let’s start drinking!
Lunar Jim!
Let’s stay drunk!

Ah, good times…

HOT - Canadian Olympians
That was a pretty good performance at the Olympics, in my uneducated opinion. I’ll even cut them slack for turning a blind eye to the fact they were carrying out their dreams in the most oppressive country in the world. It’s not their fault the Olympics were staged in a place that makes Abu Ghraib look like a Sandals resort. Really, all they can do is show up where they’re told to be. They’re just high-profile, heroic athletes after all. Not like they can change the world or anything.

NOT - Canadian whiners
Ooh, ooh, where’s our medals… sob, sob, what’s wrong with us? I love it when couch potatoes talk about our medals, as if we had the tiniest speck of involvement, as if we have the slightest clue of the commitment it takes just to be in striking distance of the Olympic Games. You know what – out of my 2007 taxes, about three or four bucks went to elite athletes, if that. So yeah, I guess it’s partly my medal. Frack…

NOT – Spontaneous Choir Singing
I’m in my office, door closed, last month, and from out in the foyer I can hear what seems to be a large group of people singing. I had to interrupt my meeting with a student to see what was going on. Sure enough, there was a group of youthful people assembled choir-like and singing Sixties folk songs, like This Land Is Your Land, and other sanctimonious bullsh*t. At the end of the song, everyone hoots and hollers, taking the decibels up even higher. I go back to my office, and they keep singing. (/embellishment)Finally, I had to go out there and say something. I waded through the now sizable and appreciative audience, and asked who was in charge. Nobody replied (it turns out they are all second-language speakers), so with a combination of hand gestures and loud, slow talking, I was able to impress on them that if they didn’t turn Up With People into a travelling roadshow, right f*cking now, I would have to sic security on their sorry glee club arses. Another example of how I, the Mortal Messiah, bridge the cultural divide, one day at a time. The crowd booed at me, but I happen to know most people didn’t appreciate Jesus either.(\embellishment)

NOT - The Judgmentalsons
Ah, you knew this summer summary could not be complete without a brief on our neighborly nemeses. As of this week, we are still fenceless, and they are still childless. We know that Mr. J’s seeds are reluctant, but apparently, Mrs. J’s eggs require six layers of asbestos if they are to have any chance of surviving the raging hellfires that are her womb. No worries, evolution will be getting back to her on that one, in about three million years. And through a series of selfish, stubborn, and ill-advised decisions, the J’s have managed to make a basic fence rebuild into an epic project. They have rebuffed all efforts at help and compromise, and so they are now stuck with a pile of wood and no assistance. Look for a longer dispatch next week.


...and we shall call it Damien Judgementalson.


And finally!!!
THIS PICTURE BEGS FOR A CAPTION...