The Ballad of Micheal Beauregard

Today when I arrived at work I was told a harrowing tale by my kitchen manager Mike, who we call Bogey both as a way to shorten his last name and because he's a self admitted terrible golfer. Bogey just got back from a week off and when I asked him how it went his response was "Just excellent...............until they dropped the fridge on me." Naturally when you hear that sentence you have to hear what comes next, and as he preceded to tell me the story my mentality(one that I've had for years, and the mentality of my brothers and fellow kitchen staff workers) of it's funny cause it didn't happen to me kicked in, and it led to many jokes being made throughout the day. So because I always have to take things one step further, and because he's probably not gonna read this, I present to you now the Ballad of Micheal Beauregard.


Here lies Bogey, he moved just a smidge
And found himself trapped, under a fridge
He had asked his son and his dad for some guidance
Yet he still found himself, underneath the appliance

He could not scream or yell, all he could do was whisper
For his legs were pinned, by the vegetable crisper
He struggled to get free before all hope was lost
Soon it would be too late, the fridge would defrost

The fridge gave way when his dad couldn't hold her
Now when they meet, he gets the cold shoulder
His son stood silent, his face fixed in awe
He couldn't believe there was a fridge on his Pa

Bogey couldn't believe it himself
When the door it flew open and down came a shelf
Then the fridge it was lifted, he was freed from death's choke
And all he could say, was that he needed a smoke

Bogey survived this extraordinary tussle
With only some bumps and some bruises
And a slightly pulled muscle
As the days went on, his spirits were higher
As he thought to himself, at least it wasn't a dryer

If Mel Gibson calls for me, tell him I'm not home

Today in the tell us how you really feel file lands Mel Gibson, who has the internet abuzz this week with the recordings of a let's just say less then civil conversation with the mother of his child that wasn't his wife. As usual my knowledge and care for the facts are limited but from what I gather Gibson was rather upset that his ex-girlfriend Oksana supported the decision Lebron James made to sign with the Heat, and this was the last straw in a tumultuous relationship, sending Gibson spiraling out of control, and causing him to tell her how he really felt. And boy oh boy tell her he did, I would transcribe his outbursts, but I like to think of this blog as a house of Jesus, or it was until Jesus read what I wrote here. Hearing Mel say these things almost brought a tear to my eye not only because it made me think of how far he has fallen, but it made me nostalgic for the times that I used to sit and watched Giants games with my dad.

However, things aren't totally looking down for Mel, I mean he has the support of Whoopi Goldberg, that's gotta count for something right? She has come out and said that in no way is Mel a racist, she knows this cause he played with her kids, no no he's not a racist, he's just an alcoholic that's all, she knows this cause he shared it with the kids, but hey she didn't mind, it settled them down while she spent the ten hours it takes to do whatever that thing on her head is. Now I'm not a fan of alcohol but I think it gets a bad rap here, I don't think it's to blame at all, you know what I think it is? Rabies, that's right rabies, listen to the tape, the man's breathing heavier then Roman Powlanski at a teenage girl's soccer game, and no doubt foaming at the mouth.

We all know that people love a good train wreck, but this is a case where I think Mel Gibson could have been helped. I mean The Signs were there when he went on his tirade about the Jewish people, it was then we should have seen that he was at the Edge of Darkness. I believe Mel has a good soul and a Braveheart, but something just snapped inside and it drove him Mad to the Max and he couldn't take it anymore. Mel is just a misguided man who truly thought he know What Women Want but this woman turned it upside down and it was time for Payback. His judgment got the better of him and he became a Lethal Weapon 4 a while, holding his sanity for Ransom. He lived dangerously like A Bird on a Wire, everybody knew him, they stared at him like he was A Man Without a Face, but even if we stopped believing in him, he never stopped believing in us, he knew deep down We Were Soldiers. If Mel is guilty of anything it's having too much Passion(of the Christ), but now that his career has no doubt suffered an Apocalypto, let's not think of him as the stark raving lunatic he is but as he was, a Road Warrior, a Patriot, and a Maverick.

Canada: A look Back

Break out the Tim Horton's and the beer, it looks like somebody's got a birthday. That's right, today our country of Canada turns 143 years old, putting her right up there with the Queen of England and Keith Richards. Today is the day when Canadians all across the country unite to celebrate our nation, right before they go back to complaining about it the next day, this year the festivities haven't been just a one day event, people in Toronto have been going nuts all week, smashing things, lighting cop cars on fire, they might not be able to hold their booze, but apparently those guys can party. There has been a lot of complaining about the ways the people of Toronto celebrate, but give them a break, it's not like they are ever gonna get to that for a celebration of one of their sports team, so let them go wild. Today, since it is the birth of the place we call home I'd like to give her a little tribute, take a look back at her life, and some of the major happenings.

Canada has changed a lot from it's humble beginnings, it started out merely as a place full of natives sitting around doing nothing, okay I guess some parts of Canada stayed the same, but then the white man cometh, and the white man taketh away. It's like Canada was there was the Native people's favorite restaurant, and all of a sudden they just stopped taking reservations(ba dum ching) and they withered under the powerful grasp of whitey, ironically some years later we devoted a railroad to stopping just that very thing in America. Then there was the time we burned down the white house, yeah we did that, for the longest time I believe it was the only physical harm ever done to the white house, until Barack Obama started raising the roof there on a daily basis.

..........And then for a long time nothing happened

Then some guy got accused of treason, sure he may have been a treacherous man but I think it's cause the people couldn't deal with what he was laying down, say what you want about the man but Louis kept it Riel. Then Canada went to war, and we fought bravely, then we decided we didn't like war, but we didn't mind supervising, so we started peacekeeping, using soothing words instead of weapons, and letting our aggression be taken out by hitting spheres of rubber with wooden sticks, and fighting not cause it made sense but it made the game more exciting, and you got to sit in that little box. Some years later the province of Quebec started feeling like Jan Brady and wanted to leave, months of suspense lead up to a big referendum asking the same question as the Clash did, should I stay or should I go? After all the fuss the only thing that ended up leaving was their hockey team, and we stayed a nation intact, enjoying the influx of poutine and maple syrup.

As Canada gets older I'm sure she will look back and reflect at the times she's had. Sure she's not perfect, she's had men lead her astray, but always clung to them thinking that they could change. She gets poked fun at a lot, and from one end of the country to the other people walk all over her, it seems like the only time people know her anthem is during the playoffs, but as she looks back would she really change anything. The more she thinks of it the more she thinks that there are probably a few things she could change, some things she could do without, such as:

Celine Dion, Anne Murray, Brian Williams, Celine Dion, Jean Chretian, Wayne Gretzky's spotlight stealing leech of a father, Mike Duffy, Celine Dion, Rita McNeil( that's gotta drop a couple of hundred pounds there) Winnipeg, Celine Dion, Simple Plan, Avril Lavigne, the Vancouver Grizzlies(oh wait) Ryan Reynolds, Celine Dion, Fred Penner, the Saskatoon Naval reserve, Stephen Harper, Corey Hart( he can join his career in obscurity) and lastly....Celine Dion.

So tonight be sure to celebrate Canada's birthday by blowing up a little piece of it, but treat her with some respect, she's old, and sometimes senile. And to all Americans, happy birthday to your country on Sunday, sure you may think your the best place in the world, but our birthday is first, so we got all the good presents.

Breaking up is......not so hard to do for Bank of Montreal apparently

I was faced yesterday with a problem, I had to end a relationship that I had for years, one that was good for me, I had to close my bank account I had with the Bank of Montreal. To prepare myself that the awkwardness that was to come, and the expected bunch of questions, such as why are you leaving us? is there someone else? can't you give us another chance? I decided to take a walk to clear my head. My walk took me around the legendary Signal hill, site of Marconi's first trans-Atlantic message or something like that, you know what history doesn't mention is that he actually lost reception, so there ya have it Newfoundland, we are the site of the first ever dropped call.

On the way home the time came to do the deed, to walk in there, face all the accusing eyes, and get it over with. I planned to do it quick, rip it off like a band-aid, but I figured they would keep me there, beg me to stay but I did not expect what happened next. I went up and said it's over, I'm done, I had found a newer sexier bank and their response was.........OK. There was no shock, there was no tears, there was no feeling, it's as if they were relieved, like they were going to do it first but I saved them the trouble. Now I know I'm not the most caring person in the world, but this seemed low even for me. I mean even the time when I rejected the mail order bride cause her mustache was bigger then mine I still felt bad for giving her the wrong name and slamming the door in her face. I even bought Svetlana a ticket back home.....or as far as Corner Brook, I can't really remember, but hey there's a lot of things in Corner Brook, I mean, they have PULP and PAPER, yeah yeah I know, had pulp and paper.

They took what little money I left in that account, for the monthly fee, and charged for saying that I used the bank machines too many times, but truly it is me who feels used. I gave you several good years of my life and this is how you repay me, by leaving me emptier then a BP oil container, leaving me lonelier then Betty White at a Golden Girls reunion. Well shame on you Bank of Montreal, for you see much like the Elephant Man I am a human being(and I enjoy peanuts) and if you cut me I do bleed, and Bank of Montreal you cut me deep just now.

For now I'm just gonna sit here wallowing in my half pint of ice cream, and for a while it's gonna be awkward when I pass you on the street, but time heals all wounds (unless they are fatal) and eventually I'll forget you ever existed. One think that I hope was not lost in the awkwardness of our separation, was the irony of the whole thing, I mean really it's not every day you see a Canadian trying to separate from something from Quebec.

Oils well that ends well

I realize that the pun in the title is a relic, a dinosaur best left unused but hey I've always thought it was pretty slick. This past few weeks we've all learned that what oil and water do, in fact, mix and that the results equal catastrophe. I haven't been keeping track of the oil spill much, as media coverage of any big event tends to frustrate me, but as usual I have pieced things together from the little snippets that I have heard. When I first heard of the BP oil spill, I thought to myself, really, when did Boston Pizza get it's own oil tanker? and why would they even need an oil tanker? of course that could explain their high prices. I don't really know much about oil, I know my province has lots of it( and you can't have it, get your own) I know it's a substance used in cooking and can be found in the hair of most Italian men. I know oil can be crude, often leering at you and making crass comments, and it's the reason that the Clampetts loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.....Hills that is, but that's the extent of my knowledge.

As with most disasters, the first people to reach out are the unsung heroes of our society, celebrities, and in this case also Kevin Costner. Apparently Costner and his company have a machine that can be used to separate oil from water, at first I thought it was some kind of super duper filter but apparently what it is is actually a dvd player and a giant television, which Costner's company will use to play WaterWorld on a continuous loop, hey it kept people away from theatres, it just might make the oil do a quick 360 and head back home. I think James Cameron has even voiced an opinion on how to clean up the oil, come on James, it took you twelve years to make Avatar, we don't have that kind of time, fish are dying here.

Everyone appears to be pointing fingers as to whose at fault, to the point where Barack Obama has gone all hood, wondering who should be the recipient of some NWA style violence, but you know who I blame? I blame Al Gore, that's right Al Gore. You might say, your an idiot, he's a huge enviromentalist, and then I after I was done sobbing over being called an idiot I would say well yeah, he's not paying much attention these days is he, he's too busy selfishly dealing with his divorce to pay attention, and with Captain Planet retired, and battling cancer(ironically he was a huge chain smoker) there is nobody left to watch over the environment and things have gone to pieces.

There is still a silver lining in all of this though, all those years George W. Bush tried to get oil from other countries, and now he didn't have to do anything, and it's coming to him, so congratulations on that I guess. Of course, the oil is swallowing up seafood like a fat person's convention at a seafood buffet but hey if they can scrape it off the top maybe they can save some barrels and oil won't rise to a ghastly price. The BP company is doing what they can to make sure the clean-up goes smoothly. By clean-up I of course mean their public image, as it appears they have spent millions of dollars trying to right their image, even buying the phrase "oil spill" from Google so that when you type it in the search engine, it will take you directly to their website about all the measures they are doing to clean up their mess. I was amazed when I read this, I mean Google is selling phrases now, Wheel of Fortune only lets you buy vowels, up yours Pat Sajack, looks like your going down harder then Gary Coleman at the hands of the ruthless Google monster.

For more information on oil, I suggest you find the episode of Saved by the Bell where they strike oil on the football field, it's quite moving and educational. You can also check out the band Midnight Oil, they might not educate you on oil spills, but if you ever want to know how to sleep when your bed is burning, they have the answer.

Ain't Life Punny

I remember a time, back in high school when I got into trouble in geometry class, I was frustrated with the material and I lashed out at the teacher, she sent me to detention for going off on a tangent. I didn't think I was a bad math student, turns out I just couldn't see the sines.

I remember a brief period of time when I wanted to be a police officer, I even went to the police academy, they partnered me up with a guy who had severe epileptic attacks, one day in training we were a bit overzealous and went a bit too far on a routine traffic check, we were kicked out for performing an illegal search and seizure.

I remember one of my first girlfriends, she was a bit intimidating because she was a spy, ultimately the relationship ended because she was always bugging me.

I remember one time I had just gotten out of the shower, and discovered there were no clean towels, scrambling I reached for some paper towel, as I was drying my face somebody started shooting at me. When I asked why he was attacking me, he said it was because there was a Bounty on my head.

I remember one time I wanted to be a doctor, I gave up that dream because I didn't have the patience.

I remember one time I was hanging out with a group of friends, I was eating a bag of chips, and despite the large target I ended up missing my mouth. Suddenly I became even more sarcastic and sharp-tongued, all my friends decided to leave, and when I asked why they told me it was because I had a chip on my shoulder.

I remember when my dad broke his leg and had to use crutches, I love spending time with dad, but it was hard to walk places with him then because they were always holding him up.

If your shaking your head and groaning right now then I've done my job, yes I know, if I were a horse they'd have to put me down, because I'm quite lame.

It's no fun being an illegal alien

I haven't been around much lately, in my time away I've learned a very valuable lesson, hockey players don't like to be antagonized and Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby WILL call the the cops on you if you endlessly call them to gloat about Montreal beating them, geez, what a bunch of sore losers. In reality, not much has been happening in my world these days, the other day I went to the mall and saw The Losers, and seeing all those people in the mall gave me an idea to go see the movie of the same name, which was an enjoyable flick for a mindless action movie. Speaking of mindless, Arizona has been in the news lately, at first I thought it was because all the other states had been talked about, and Arizona was the only one left, but then I read what it was about and I was left scratching my head. It appears that in July a law will commence that states that all immigrants will have to have papers saying they are legal citizens, and if they can't prove it, they could be fined or eventually charged with a misdemeanor. It's like Moe the Bartender said "Immigrants, even when it was the bears, I knew it was the immigrants."

The law apparently also gives police the right to try and distinguish the person's race or heritage(I can't remember which, both are equally asinine) on the spot, hmmm I enjoy guessing games, can I play? let's see there Juan, your name is Sanchez is it, I don't think your of American heritage at all, what's that you say? you've got papers? sounds like drug paraphernalia to me, get in the car.....man I could totally be a cop. I don't think there is cause for any immediate concern, I mean I don't think they are gonna ship anyone off, because really they have been trying to get rid of the Coyotes for about two years, and they still play in Phoenix, of course they are all white, now the Suns, the Suns could be in trouble. I can see it now, ladies and gentlemen introducing your Phoenix Suns starting five............at center Steve Nash, at point guard Steve Nash, at small Forward Steve Nash......and well I forget the rest of the positions, I don't watch much basketball, all I really know about it is you shoot the ball at the little hole and if you do it well enough you get your sneaker.

A lot of people seem to be up in arms over the whole law, the general manager of the Yankees say they will not send anybody to the All Star Game to be held in Arizona because of the law. They are not just boycotting because of moral reasons, have you seen the Yankees team, half of Cuba has defected to them, they wouldn't be allowed in the state to begin with. I think even Tiger Woods said he would not play any tournaments held in Arizona, you know it's bad when Tiger won't play, cause apparently he can't keep himself out of anything, so to be rejected by Tiger, that's gotta hurt. I can kind of see where the Arizona government is coming from, I mean i have seen District 9, I know it's gotta be hard for people and aliens to co-exist, and V has taught me another thing, these aliens are not to be trusted and their leader is unspeakably hot, I mean not hot enough to make me watch after Lost is over, but that's just cause the writing is shotty at best.

I do also feel kind of bad for the immigrants as well. They only come to America and Canada looking for a better opportunity, to leave a world where all they know is war, okay if your from Iraq it's probably because America is attacking you, but now they find out they are to be subject to a fine if they can't prove they belong there like everyone else. How does that saying go? give me your poor, your tired, and your huddled masses, and then put them single file to fill out the proper paperwork to make sure they can be a legal citizen, man that's a long saying, no wonder they only focus on the first three. I figure some people don't like the fact that people come from other countries and take what little jobs are probably available, and they may be bitter at losing a job to a person of Mexican descent, cause really ya don't have to hate the whole country, it only takes Juan.