Sports-fan Vengeance

When M and I were engaged, I constantly told him that he was a nicer, more discipline version of me. Being so nice, he of course protested and denied my point, but after 2+ years of marriage, I am convinced that I'm more right than ever.
Exhibit A: we went on a little trip to Boston over Easter - and the city is gorgeous! Beautiful architecture, gorgeous nature, nice people, incredible history. The only thing I couldn't appreciate was their hockey team - the Boston Bruins. Now, the Bruins are major rivals to my boys, the Montreal Canadiens, and we were there in the thick of the play-off race, so when Boston lost one of the games they had that weekend (to Toronto, no less!) I was smugly satisfied. "But why?" M asked, "why do you want them to do badly?"
"Because they're our rivals - I have to hate them. I DO hate them." and I meant it. Not the individual players or people - I have nothing against those, but the team, the Bruins as an entity: I can't want them to do well. What kind of a Habs fan would that make me?
Exhibit B: My beloved Canadiens have pulled off a miraculous upset in round 1 of this year's play-offs, beating the unbeatable Washington Capitals, a team with Ovechkin, Backstrom, Semin, Knuble, and a defenseman named Mike Green who's been nominated for the Norris trophy this year. I'm listing all these guys so you realize who GOOD washington was. And we beat them. And on the night of their elimination, as we were leading the score 2-0 with 5 minutes left, the TV panned across the Washington audience and showed us their desolate faces. M felt sorry for them. I laughed at them. I may have said "Nana nana boo-boo". Mature. I know. But the point is, I felt pure and total glee at their frustration. Again, my bewildered husband asked "Why?" - and I truly can't remember what I answered, but I justified my behaviour. Now, to put it in more articulate words, I think this is the reason: this is the joy in being a fan. You laugh at the other team because if they weren't losing you'd be losing. Victory and defeat in sports are mutually exclusive. Victory only goes to one side. So I'm laughing at them not so much because they're losing, but because the fact that they're losing means I'm winning. In life, this is different. In life, you can make yourself a winner and help other people be winners at the same time. I would never allow myself to laugh at another's misfortune in life. But in sports, I more than allow it, I enjoy it. M still thinks this is unreasonable, and that's all the proof I need that's he's nicer. Waaaaaaaay nicer. I'm lucky my husband is so awesome.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get my hate on for the Pittsburgh Penguins. This is gonna be more difficult. Crosby was Canada's golden boy 2 months ago, and now he must become an enemy. Wish me luck!

Of Old Commercials and Singing Cows

I've always been a fan of commercials. Done right, they are often more entertaining than the program you were actually watching, and there are a few that are just classics. My uncle and I were reminiscing about this commercial last night: the HP "makes beef sing" slogan with the cow singing what I always took to be Elvis... I'm pretty sure the reason we both remember it so well (to the point where, embarrassingly enough, I can essentially sing the whole thing from memory) is because we had taped something once and the commercial was on the tape for years and years... Anyway, like everything else, it's up on Youtube. And because it makes me happy every time I remember it, I thought I'd pass on the ridiculousness...

Do you play nasty so you can eventually play nice?

Back to my current obsession: politics... So, we're off here in Canada now, and the polls are showing a possible Conservative majority. *shudder*. I had a good email conversation with a friend of mine about how we're all in a lot of trouble if the Conservatives get a majority and if the Republicans *shudder shudder* manage to win AGAIN to our south.
One of the reasons we're convinced these parties are doing well? They play negative. Sometimes, they downright lie. The lies in Sarah Palin's speech at the GOP convention last week are documented here, but you can bet that most people won't bother double checking whether she was telling the truth or not. And the jab at Obama's community organizer job in Chicago when he first finished university? I'm trying to understand why it's funny or witty to belittle the people Barack Obama was trying to help...
Here in the great white north, the Liberal party has decided to go negative against Harper. It's something that's been debated back and forth. Attack ads are typically nasty and below the belt, but they're also exceptionally effective. Can you say you're going to be above the political bickering, as Obama has done, that you're going to stay above "politics as usual" and then run attack ads against your opponent? It becomes a question of "does the end justify the means." This article argues that you have to, that the stakes are too high otherwise. At this point, I'm okay with the Liberals or the Democrats running attack ads. That's the game right now, and without it, their chances of winning, (or stopping a Harper majority here in Canada) are slim. And besides, there's lots to attack the Republicans and Conservatives on that wouldn't involve lying. They've set themselves up.

Finally, check out Jon Stewart's clip below, illustrating some typical hypocrisy on Palin's qualifications, and playing the sexism card.

Our Telephones are Haunted (or else crazy)

Strangeness:
I woke up on Saturday night/Sunday morning at 3:30 a.m. to the sound of my cell phone ringing. This, of course, terrified me. There aren't that many people out there who have my number beyond family and very close friends so of course, I assumed something was very wrong with someone I loved. Not the case, thank God. No, this was the case: M's cell phone, sitting on the dining room table, charging, had LOST it and was dialing and redialing my cell phone over and over. Essentially, even though M was inside asleep, his cell phone was crank calling me at3:30 a.m. I checked all five messages that had been left. They were all empty. In the last one, I could here me walking across the room to check my phone.
I couldn't figure out how to just turn off my ringer, so I turned off the phone completely. In the morning, there were 7 more. SEVEN!
It hasn't happened since. We'll see what's next.

Hilariously Scary Misunderstanding

Here's a story from camp. On Saturday, I had a little cry-fest about missing my sister with one of my close friends from Ottawa. Afterwards, even though I'd washed my face, I still looked like Rudolf with a sunburn and an emotional breakdown (red nose, red eyes, red cheeks, red everything.) One of the other girls asked me what was wrong.
What I said: "I just miss my sister." Pause. "She's in Dubai".
What she heard: "I just lost my sister." Pause. "She's in Dubai".
This explains the horrified look on her face as I explained and then rushed away.

Beautiful People, Shallow People

Yes, we have come to this... A site called beautifulpeople.net is opening in Canada. Beautiful People is different from other dating sites because, well, it only lets beautiful people in. The goal is to ween out the "uglies", see? Before anyone can register, they send a picture and are judged by the existing members, who decide if they're goodlooking enough to get it... This is where Karma kicks in, see? Because if you find your significant other on this site, well, you're finding someone as shallow as you for signing up, and you can make each other unhappy for as long as you both shall live. Heaven forbid anyone end up getting a pimple and falling out of love...

Officially Ridiculous

Have you heard about the 12 year old girl in Gatineau who took her father to court for grounding her? This child's parents are divorced, and when her dad decided she couldn't go a field trip as punishment for bad behaviour, she went back to stay with her mom, but also took him to court. More ridiculous than this is that the judge ruled against him. Please please do not let this set a precedent for kids being able to take their parents to court. This is a matter of discipline, and whether you agree or not with the dad's disciplinary measures, it's not something that needs, or should have, the interference of courts. I wish the judge had just I'm not an expert in legalese by any means, but I seem to remember hearing that there are so many things that don't make it to court for ages because the system is backed up like crazy. The last thing we need is this kind of thing slowing stuff down even more...
I posted this about the law a few weeks ago. Please, let's not make a complete mockery of the beautiful system we have in this country to hold people to account.