… up Canada way.
I think that it was just as they were singing like this: “O–Can-a-da”, that word went round that the boat was sinking.
Stephen Leacock
The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias
Happy Canada Day, everyone.
A third-rate burglary
Fifty years ago, in the early hours of 17 June 1972, security guard Frank Wills noticed something was wrong at the Watergate office complex. He called the cops and changed history.
Thank you, Frank Wills. If only things had turned out better for you.
While we’re at it, we should remember legendary police reporter Alfred E. Lewis, who called in the story to the Washington Post, including the detail that the accused men dined on lobster at the Watergate Hotel restaurant before the break-in.
June
It’s Accordion Awareness Month in the U.S. Celebrate the stomach Steinway.
Big brass
It’s International Tuba Day. How low can you go?
May
Welcome in the May O. (And celebrate International Workers’ Day.)
April in Paris (and elsewhere)
“One more once!”
Spring
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.… Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows
Political science
If the people believe there’s an imaginary river out there, you don’t tell them there’s no river there. You build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river.
Nikita Khrushchev to Richard Nixon
quoted by Rick Perlstein in
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
Lines I like
“What ho!” I said.
What ho!” said Motty.
“What ho! What ho!”
“What ho! What ho! What ho!”
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
Merry Christmas, everybody
The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, Fairytale of New York.
Christmas dreams, shattered and otherwise. Soaring music and grubby lyrics. But also tenderness and hope – which, after all, is what Christmas is all about.
Merry Christmas. And a tip of the tuque to Walt Kelly, who brought joyous nonsense to Christmas when I was a boy.
Rannygazoo 