Rainbow Butt Monkeys: Canadian
“Circles”; ‘Letters From Chutney‘ (1995)
Click Here For More Canadian Music… do it kids, stick it to The Man.
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The First Three News Stories On 08/20/07
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Monday’s News Sometime Later: I’ve stopped taking this thing so seriously and it’s getting easier as a result, so it looks like the Monday News thing is a keeper. What’s making it easier is the whole “sometime later” philosophy I’ve adopted. It’s something I’ve practiced in other areas of my life, so it was probably inevitable I’d adopt it in here. Check out the thing aboot the fighter jets over my village… they were wicked cool.
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7pm PBS: The News Hour
1) Second Iraqi Governor Killed: Muhammad Ali al-Hassani, Governor of the Iraqi province of Al-Muthanna, was killed when a bomb exploded near his convoy while he was on his way to work. Two of his guards were wounded in the attack. Al-Hassani was a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Iraq’s largest Shiite party. The Shiite governor of al-Qadisiyah province, Khalil Jamil Hamza, died in a similar bomb attack on August 11. The two southern provinces neighbour each other. Iraqi police have blamed the Mahdi Army, which is loyal to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Also on Monday, August 20, two bombings in Baghdad killed at least seven people. One targeted the Shiite district of Sadr City; the other hit a busy market.
2) Hurricane Dean Hits Jamaica: Hurricane Dean barely missed the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, but was headed straight for Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Monday. The Category 4 storm killed 12 people as it crossed the Caribbean. Most of the midsection of the United States were also recovering from deadly floods. At least 20 people were killed in separate storm systems across three states. More than a ten inches of rain fell on parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, causing flash floods and the evacuation of entire towns. Also, up to nine inches of rain fell around Oklahoma City over the weekend. Still no word on the Pestilence, although a man on a pale horse was seen crossing into the United States from Canada.
3) America, Mexico & Canada Meet: Roughly 60% of everything Canada makes, cuts down or extracts ends up being sold to America. But, going the other way, Canada purchases more American crap than any other country. Roughly 30-35% of everything made, cut down or extracted in America ends up here. In fact Canada is the largest trading partner for most of the individual states. I know next to nada aboot Mexico — other than it’s economy is barely above third world levels, but I know Canada is one of the largest economies on earth. No shit.
With a labour force of 17.2 million Canada’s GDP is US$1.178 trillion. Germany’s GDP, with a labour force 2.5 times greater, is US$2.63 trillion while France, with 27 million potential workers, sits at US$1.891 trillion. The United States, just to finish the comparison, could buy the top eight economies, including Japan, and still have enough change lying around to buy South America and South East Asia. I’m not joking. The American GDP sits at US$13.13 trillion.
All that to say North America has been in talks for aboot twelve years to create an economic and security zone similar to what the European Union has done, except without the Gallic attitude and single currency bullshit. This was the first serious meeting between the leaders of Mexico, America and Canada to that end.
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10pm CBC: The National
1) The Montebello Summit: The summit was held at a resort just up the road from my little village. It’s basically the Quebec version of where I live. Lots of gardens; old mountains; old, but well maintained homes and a decent economy which supports a thriving arts scene. The resort itself, where the Summit was held, is one of the most beautiful in Canada. It’s basically a huge log cabin next to the Ottawa River which, on the Quebec side, is called the Gatineau River. President Bush, new Mexican President Calderon and our Prime Minister Stephen Harper hooked up for three days of talks. The eventual and current goal is to “harmonize” certain standards, like for car parts. All three countries have large auto manufacturing sectors and right now there are three different sizes for pretty much everything.
2) Hurricane Dean Hits: There were photos taken from the Space Station which made this storm look the size of Canada. They were then put on TV where news people who should know better commented on the humoungousness of the monster killer storm. Thing is… okay, the Space Station isn’t actually “in space”. It’s in a low earth orbit. It’s only a couple hundred miles over you and barely out of Earth’s atmosphere. So what happens when you draw a dot on a beach ball, then bring the beach ball to your nose? The dot looks massive. But it’s still just a dot. Dean was large and in charge, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the size of the planet.
3) Snowbird Accident Report: Okay… check this out. The Snowbirds are the elite flying team of the Canadian Air Force, but the planes they use are older than God… the Canadian built training aircraft, the CT-114 Tutor jet, has been in service since 1971. It was used by the Canadian Forces as its basic pilot training aircraft until 2000. In 2004 two of the planes collided during a high-risk maneuver during a practice run over Saskatchewan. One pilot, Captain Miles Selby, was killed. A few weeks ago the preliminary report, which it turns out was the ‘preliminary preliminary’ report, found that Captain Selby likely died due to his inexperienced and he had never performed the stunt before that day. But whoops… hold on a minute. Ends up Captain Selby wasn’t the pilot of his own demise, turns out the plane everyone believes should be turned into a monument and firmly encased in concrete had faulty seatbelts. When Captain Shelby rolled his plane during the maneuver his seatbelt broke and he couldn’t reach the pedals, and of course the ejector seat was useless because he wasn’t attached to the freaking seat. And it was a problem people knew aboot before hand. Everyone has known for a decade the CT-114 Tutor needs to be replaced, but someone was too busy balancing a budget by cutting defence spending to notice the equipment was falling apart.
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11pm CTV National News
1) Hurricane Dean: This is actually Eastern Canada’s hurricane season as well. The hurricanes that skirt along the Eastern United States always blow themselves out in the Atlantic Provinces, sometimes they’ll hit the Toronto-Montreal corridor. They’re never as bad, of course. Although Nova Scotia got hit pretty hard a few years ago. The worst I’ve ever seen it was on a canoe trip a few years ago and the swells were higher than the gunnels. That was fun.
2) America Experiences Weather: Every year reporters experience rain for the first time. Then snow, then ice, then cold, then flowers blooming… yadda yadda yadda. There were floods — probably due to rain, but no one’s talking — in the American Midwest.
3) Montebello Conference: Security was very tight for the conference, of course. The protests were pretty tiny. A few hundred people, maybe a couple of thousand. The Sûreté de Quebec, basically a paramilitary force, were protecting the Chateau. The SQ are, without a doubt, some of the roughest cops in Canada. But the really, really, really cool thing was the CF-18’s. Our village fair was going on at the same time, and during the fair some of the local dudes get in their little planes and fly overhead. On Saturday morning an orange Cessna-type plane was flying over our village when there was this loud WHOOSH and suddenly there was a slow moving CF-18 behind him. It was like the military jet was hovering. And it was so low you could almost count the rivets. Then came the popPOP-POP-POPCRASH and another CF-18 came screaming in from the Montreal area and dropped right in front of the orange plane. You could actually see the wings on the orange plane wobble. It was fuck.ing.in.sane. People at the fair, at least some of them, thought it was all a show. We’re right between two international airports and three military airports, so we get a lot of air traffic. But it’s always UP THERE at 30,000 feet. These two fighter jets were, maybe, 400 feet off the ground. Stunning.
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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.
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cultural sn:afu 