Sorry about the gap in everything here. I have been working too much lately. Now for my follow up on Free Trade. Vancouver and BC are in a sorry state, and the only solution I can see to end our dependency on natural resources is to create a free trade zone in Vancouver. We shall become the sister city of Hong Kong, complete with exorbitant real estate prices ( we already have them), a booming illicit drug trade, sweatshops and hot pot houses.....

In all my life of being a Canadian, I have never felt an event having such an impact on our national identity and self esteem as the Olympic mens hockey final on Sunday. The Free Trade Agreement comes close, but a gold in the hockey is badly needed by the country. It has been battered about lately, from softwood lumber tariffs, alleged control of our military, to the downward pressure on our loonie.

We simply must win this as a matter of national pride. I have never felt it this strongly before. This one is going to be tense.

Somehow I doubt that after Dubya wakes up in the morning, and while shaving, peering into the mirror, fancying himself as Chuck Norris sorting out the Taliban once and for all, he thinks of this.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't have any access to cable television, unless I go over to young Robert's house and get my fix of documentary television. Because of this lack of cable, I miss the boat on all the latest commercials. Which is not a bad thing in any way.

Friday afternoon I was tired and cranky, due to a minor hangover and a lack of sleep. I think I have been working too hard lately, and by Friday at noon, I am ready to pack it in. Oh, yeah, there was that beer at lunch on Friday that further lowered my productvitiy level. Well, by 3pm we were in the Shark Club, a place I would not normally frequent, but since this was the opening hockey game of the Olympics, I was there, pint in hand, eyes glued to one of the 25 television sets they have mounted on the walls. The game was forgettable, as Canada lost 5-2 in a miserable display of ineptitude. What remains clearly in my mind is a Visa advertisement that aired near the end of the game. It shows a couple driving to the airport, the man driving, the woman clearly angry at him, as she stares out her passenger window. They arrive at the departure drop-off, he opens the trunk, and surprise! there are two suitcases in the trunk. She looks at him in astonishment and he whips out a second plane ticket. The man has a look of relief on his face, which fades to a mesage about how Visa can get you out of the doghouse anytime.

I thought about this for a while after. How many men have gone into debt on their credit cards so that they can get their nagging girlfriend/wife/whatever off their back?

Ain't love grand...

A few weeks back I read this column in the National Post, about a young right winger who can't get laid. He blames his sexual defeat on his political views, stating that women find left-of-centre men more attractive than those who are concerned, perhaps passionately gripped, with fiscal rectitude and the freedom of markets to define and shape the world. I can't understand why this was worth writing, but then again I was reading the National Post. Like it is any revelation that most right winger in their 20s and early 30s were lonely losers through most of their adolescence and college years. They are exacting their revenge for the teasing and the exclusion they endured as teens. Now they work for the Fraser Institute.

I once almost bought in to the idea that markets should decide everything, that if only government got out of our way everything would be alright. Ahhh the free market. Your friend and mine.....

My favorite comic strip is back, and with an update for the latest crisis gripping our hyperactive friends down south.

Speaking of espresso, here is an alternative to caffeine in the morning. Get your rage on!

I hate to be a know-it-all, I really do. But the word is "espresso", not "expresso", which is likely an overnight delivery service and not a strong caffeinated drink. People around me use the term expresso, and irregardless and "I could care less". Oh really? You could care less? How much less could you care?

Perhaps I get frustrated by the people that sit around me because I feel I have let myself down. Oops, there goes my self pity again.
SLAP.

Now this is the sickest joke of all.

With each passing day, I watch our neighbors to the south spiral into madness I am becoming happier and happier that I live in Canada, where freedom is still not something you learn from a commercial, nor has it been trademarked yet. The US department of Immigration has barred Ross Rebigliati from entering the US because he admitted that he had once smoked pot; not because he says he still smokes pot, or has some in his shoes, or is planning on a packing a bowl when he gets down to Salt Lake City, but because he once did.

Whatever happened to "when I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish"? The real reason he is being barred is that he is proof that smoking pot did not lead him to a life of drug addiction, crime and moral depravity. He smoked weed and he still won the gold medal. And John Ashcroft just can't have that. Shit, if he had his way, we wouldn't be able to play cards or even dance.

So screw the Salt Lake City Olympics. I just want Canada to win the gold medals in hockey and curling.

Peace, Order and Good Government for all!