Quotation of the Day for March 8, 2009 “If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” – Anatole France.

12 things to throw at Bush Best line: 12. Reality … He will merely blink a few times and get that look on his face like he almost had a thought, then it passed, like a bit of gas. Heh.

Quotation of the Day for August 8, 2008 “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even […]

A poem: CONSOLATION How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer, wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns. How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets, fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots. There are no abbeys […]

Quotation of the Day for November 3, 2007 “Beware of those who argue the loudest. The truth does not care if it is questioned; the truth can always stand up to questioning. I have found that only the false fights back, retaliates, and attacks. The truth might defend itself, though it does not really need […]

Quotation of the Day for October 10, 2008 “You can clean files and other equipment, but there is just no way to sanitize live fish.” – Christine Anthony, spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Licensing explaining why “pedicures by fish” are now illegal in the state. [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/381596_FishFeet03.html]

Sarah Palin was de-witched by nutball pastor? What a shame As for Palin, turns out Muthee laid on some hands, delivered a garbled serpents n’ brimstone prayer designed not merely to help her leap from Mayor of Nowheresville to perky gubernatorial fireplug … but also to protect her from that same silly/terrifying witchcraft I imagined […]

In honour of our most-likely-imminent election: Quotation of the Day for August 30, 2008 “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” – Sir Ernest Benn

I don’t play WoW (Civilization’s always been my timesucking computer game). But Lore does: World of Warcraft‘s developers have mastered the unholy art of in-game bribery. They have discovered that players will do any number of stupid, tedious things in order to earn perks that have no effect on the game. Just this week I’ve […]

Some random quotes on Canadianness… Quotation of the Day for June 22, 2008 “Canadians and Americans are indistinguishable. The only way to tell them apart is to make this statement to a Canadian.” – Alan Abel, American, writer for the (Canadian) National Post, quoting (he believes) from “Canajan Eh?” which he read back in the […]

The summer Jerry Garcia died, I was working at a daycamp in a conservation area outside Stouffville. Once each session some of the kids slept over at camp. I was in charge of organizing and supervising these little adventures, which was a blast but also exhausting since — as it was a daycamp — the […]

Quotation of the Day for April 7, 2008 “When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious […]

How odd to see this float through my inbox — Quotation of the Day for April 4, 2008 “Its major importance would appear to be financial support of the surgical profession.” – Alfred Sherwood Romer and Thomas S. Parsons, explaining the role of the human appendix, in The Vertebrate Body. I remember doing a double-take […]

Quotation of the Day for February 25, 2008 “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allow us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made […]

Quotation of the Day for January 5, 2008 “Because it does not take much courage to fight when you still believe you can win. What takes real courage is to keep fighting when all hope is gone.” – Deqing, Shaolin monk, explaining why heroes in Western action movies (who usually succeed) are less heroic than […]