What’s that smell?

Today’s fascinating story: according to the Associated Press, many property owners are protecting their trees from Christmas tree poaching by spraying them with fox urine. This, you might guess, smells rather bad – especially when the tree is brought indoors.

I can’t blame the owners of the trees for taking this preventive measure. But I have a question: whose job is it to spray the fox urine? Does this go to the unlucky slob who has the least seniority? Or is there a firm that specializes in fox urine spraying? And who is the even unluckier slob whose job it is to collect large quantities of fox urine? How do you persuade somebody to do that? How do you put this on your resume?

The Torontoist, a Toronto-based blog (as you probably already guessed), recently featured a Cover Song Catalogue. This is a collection of their favourite cover songs (you probably guessed that too). Lots of people are commenting on the list by providing favourites lists of their own, which makes the list even cooler.

Here’s my list of favourite cover songs, starting with two I’ve mentioned here recently. I’ve probably missed some, so I reserve the right to sneak back here and surreptitiously add songs to the end of my list.

Johnny Cash, “Hurt”
Screeching Weasel, “You Are My Sunshine”
Ramones, “California Sun”
Damned, “Ballroom Blitz”
Galaxie 500, “Isn’t It A Pity” and “Ceremony”
Smashing Pumpkins, “Dreaming”
Bangles, “Hazy Shade of Winter”
Cat Power, “Satisfaction”
Devo, “Satisfaction”
Sex Pistols, “No Fun”
Clash, “Pressure Drop” and “I Fought The Law”
Social Distortion, “Ring of Fire”
Shonen Knife, “Suzy is a Headbanger”
Husker Du, “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”
Japan, “Eight Miles High”
Temple City Kazoo Band, “Whole Lotta Love”
Camper Van Beethoven, “Pictures of Matchstick Men”
English Beat, “Tears of a Clown”
Nirvana, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”

Author Christopher Hitchens has written an article in next month’s Vanity Fair titled Why Women Aren’t Funny. Hitchens, who is described in Wikipedia as being known for his “iconoclasm, anti-clericalism, atheism, antitheism, anti-fascism and anti-monarchism”, once wrote a book that suggested that Henry Kissinger should be tried as a war criminal.

Oh, by the way, I know many funny women. Hitchens is wrong.

What is this "sun" I have heard so much about?

Occasionally, I need to remind myself not to complain too much about my life. Today, I was playing bridge online. My partner was a woman I’d never met before. In her profile, she wrote:

I am totally disabled and I use a head mouse. It takes a few seconds to click.

I, on the other hand, am almost startlingly mobile; I walk an hour a day. Yep, I’m lucky.

The online version of the Globe and Mail reports that the entire Vancouver region is under a boil-water advisory. Residents are advised that even brushing teeth or washing vegetables in unboiled water is dangerous, as water supplies may have been stirred up by Wednesday’s storms. The Canadian solution to this problem is, of course, to use beer in place of water.

Our weather is a little wonky too: in my part of the world, we could get as much as 50 to 75 millimetres of rain today. (For those of you not familiar with the metric system: 50 millimetres equals one humongous amount of rain. 75 millimetres equals 1 1/2 humongous amounts.)

One final comment on the weather: the Globe provides a comments section for most of their online articles, in which ordinary citizens such as you and me can sound off to our hearts’ content. As I write this, the last comment on the weather story was this plaintive lament:

Has anyone seen the sun?

I think I’m old enough to remember the sun. Or maybe my parents told me about it. It’s that bright yellow thing, isn’t it?

The Globe also reported that scientists have created a four-legged robot that can cope with injury. It senses damage to its body, and figures out how to adjust its gait. This is an important development – for example, bridges could be built that could sense their own structural weaknesses and send out a red signal to stop traffic. (If, of course, they choose to. Mwahahahaha.) I say that robots won’t come close to being human until they learn to adapt to pain the way humans adapt to it: by whining and complaining a lot.

My Debora spam has evolved again. Now, its header is “Name message”, where Name is the last name of the fake person sending the email. I have received messages from John, Greenberg, Swain, Howe, Wilder, Salinas, Carrier, Wesley, Pennington, Joiner, and Mccarthy. There’s not quite as much of it today (he said, crossing his fingers).

My grocery store has Christmas decorations up already. My grocery store. In mid-November. Is there anyone who works in retail who isn’t thoroughly sick of anything related to Christmas by the time December 25th actually comes around? Ho, ho, fricking ho. Bah, humbug. Bring back the pagan winter solstice festival.