Rose's Cantina

They couldn't go through with it. Just couldn't make those big, bad scary cuts. Had to postpone everything for at least a decade. Not that I'm complaining. I really dodged the big bullet. I'm 55 so I missed the cut off on the Old Age Security by, like, a year. Bwah hah hah. Can't touch me now, Steve-o. I'll be a government revenue sucking leech until the day I die. I'm so poor now, I hardly pay any income tax. I'll still be poor at age 65, so come to me, mama, you great big fat pension cheque. What is it, like, $600? And I'll get more because I'm poor, poor. I'll qualify for the Guaranteed Income Supplement, for sure, too. So that's something. Sure, I may still have to live out in the woods somewhere drinking cheap hooch and living off my Air Miles from the liquor store. Go off the grid. Get a post office box. Count my pennies.

According to CTV News, the government will raise the age limit for the Old Age Security to 67 in a decade. That means that I will be privileged to be the first "cohort" to experience the thrill of waiting an extra two years to get on the old doll dole. I've also heard that the government is contemplating introducing assisted suicide for seniors. Sign me up!

Do you ever feel like a stranger in your own land? It's like you've decided to join a converation and everyone else is speaking Esperanza. Or Pig Latin and you're the pig. That's how I feel about the whole Junos thing taking place in Ottawa this week. I was just listening to Ottawa Morning on CBC Radio and the ahts reporter was breathlessly reciting the names of all the acts who will be in town, acts I could "catch". I'd only heard of one band and that's MonkeyJunk. I've only heard about MonkeyJunk because Scott and I did a documentary on the Ottawa Bluesfest ten years ago and we met Tony D. and Steve Marriner and they somehow came together to make a band. And gave it a cool name. The Junos is like a foreign film festival to me. And I'm the foreigner. It's the same thing with the Geminis. I've tried to watch the Geminis -- maybe the Genies, I'm not sure, I get mixed up -- and I can't name one movie which has been nominat...

Now before all you folks get all up in Daltie's b'ness, try to look on the bright side. Daltie is going to be increasing the number of liquor barns across the province. And upping the ante on gambling by trying to build lavish casinos to suck in more sheckles from bored seniors. Caching! Daltie and Dwight are getting creative. They are looking for more sure fired ways to indirectly tax us all. They want us to drink more. They want us to keep shoving hundreds in one-armed bandits. That will mean more money in the coffers of the government, which in turn will be used to battle the dastardly deficit. And we will drink and gamble more by crackie. In this little burg alone, there will be hundreds of civil servants who are going to be laid off by the Harper government. They will have lots of time -- and money -- on their hands and no jobs. So the logic goes, they will need outlets to spend, spend, spend. Why not spend those severance cheques right here in Ontario instead of in ...

I, for one, think legalized prostitution would be a good thing. Prostitutes provide an essential service in our society. They satisfy the needs of a volatile public who would otherwise have to get their sexual needs satisfied for free elsewhere. My first husband used prostitutes and I was grateful for it. He'd take trips to Las Vegas and I knew he wasn't just playing golf, and I didn't care. I wasn't interested in having sex with him and it kept our marriage going longer as a result. (I'm not sure if his current wife know this. Hope I'm not letting the cat out of the bag. :) There are a lot of guys in our society who would never get laid if not for prostitutes. Ugly guys. Smelly guys. Guys with disfigurements. Dudes with crazy-assed needs. Even prominent doctors turned senators in our community. Guys with no time or desire to buy a girl dinner. Prostitutes are saints who help sinners get their jollies in order to leave the rest of us alone. That said, I...

I was wondering whether ET Canada would be covering the NDP leadership convention. After all, politics is show business for ugly people. I didn't see many celebs among the balding academics and the wildhaired socialists. Only Shirley Douglas, and she's looking a might scary these days. Jack Layton may indeed have been the last sharp dressed man in the NDP. He and Olivia certainly had style, he in his tiny perfect Harry Rosen suits, she in her lovely linens. Even yesterday, Olivia looked perfectly enchanting in her cable knit yellow sweater. Nathan Cullen seemed to be the only one, amongst the new guard, who had been to a dress for success seminar. I had hoped that would count for something. Alas, Nathan won't be cleaning out his Confed office anytime soon. It was a sad fashion spectacle at the Metro Convention Centre, full of men dressed in ill-fitting suits and women with bed head. Even the commentators looked like they'd been up all night drinking Fire and Ice...

On April 16, Oprah Winfrey will be bringing her show, Oprah's Lifeclass to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto. For $435 a ticket, fans will be able to see Lady O, Tony Robbins and a gaggle of other new age thinkers. It will be like the American Idol tour without the music. Lucky us. It's all part of a whirlwind tour designed to shore up popularity for her flagging network, OWN, and its Canadian counterpart, OWN Canada. The place will be packed. It's a certainy. Oprah is a tremendous draw, personally. But will it be enough to save her network which is hemorrhaging much more than the $300 million originally invested by the Discovery Channel? The signs are everywhere that OWN is in free fall. - In spite of good ratings for her recent interview with Whitney Houston's daughter, all other programs are receiving tepid ratings. Even Oprah's Lifeclass , which was launched last fall, has averaged only 318,000 viewers and the webcast has done muc...

Every once in a while, the Love Monster resurfaces and I have to bat her down. She reared her needy head yesterday during a visit to the Pretoria Animal Hospital. It was a difficult visit for Scott and me. The last time we were there, we had to wave goodbye to our lovely Hannah who was riddled with cancer. We thought she had a bad tooth; instead Dr. Morgan told us she was dying and we had to let her go. It was one of the most difficult days of my life. Sweet Hannah, what would be do without her? As with all deaths in the family, time does heal but we're still taking it hard. Every time we pass a golden, wagging a feathery tail and shaking its leash, the heart stops. She's gone; we have accepted that. But it still hurts like hell. Yesterday, we took our elder pug, Ming, in for her yearly check-up. As we sat in the examination room, our eyes focused on the brand new digital picture frame which held photographs of all Pretoria's favorite clients. And there she was, our ...

As Frankie Valley once crooned: "Oh, what a night". It was like a scene from Bridesmaids . I wasn't sure what end it was coming out. All of my orifices were weeping. Look away! And, My Lord, kill me now. The situation was so dire, I had to sit on the throne while puking into a pail. Thank God it didn't happen earlier when I was at Costco. There would have been a clean up on aisle six. To think, I got the flu shot. Didn't matter. As a smarmy nurse might tell me, I got the shot for the wrong strain of flu. Obviously. I've never had the flu shot before this year. I only did so because we had a baby coming into the house and didn't want little Skye's life to be put in peril. I've always thought it was the most pessimistic of actions, getting the flu shot, like buying full term life insurance. Or building a bunker. Besides, I have the constitution of an elephant, thanks to years of being a journalist aka professional drinker. I'm not a  ...

The plague on my house continues. It now turns out the only ones who have avoided the nasty gastro bug are me and little Skye. I suppose the lamb's blood I put above her nursery door helped. Got that tip from the Ten Commandments. God, I love home remedies. Anyways, the big fallout appears to be diarrhea, diarrhea, diarrhea. We can't get our new washer and dryer too soon. In trying to help, I may have set the cat amongst the pigeons. I prescribed Imodium and now Scott has the opposite problem -- you know what that is. I did warn him. As my friend, John, the alcoholic says: Imodium is the drinker's friend. It just blasts all the bacteria out, so it will take a few days to grow again. Better, I told, Scott than gas and diarrhea, especially when you're a car salesman who likes to take people on long test drives. Poor little Ming, the pug is ailing, too. It's the beginning of allergy season and she hasn't eaten in a couple of days. I dosed her last night w...

We have a plague on our house today and I'm trying to steer clear of it. Scott spent most of the day yesterday seated on one throne while Nick had his head down the other one. Having said this, I fully expect my Facebook community will chime in with its characteristic smarminess. "Shouda got the flu shot!" Perhaps it's true but I will not be saying that to them, lest the hand of God decide to cuff me up the side of the head. I am not above a little teasing but I'm prefering to stay low and out of the way of this particular brand of nastiness. When a bug goes around, the human reaction is to ask: was it something we ate? Nay, Nick eats crap in the basement and Scott ate what I ate on Saturday, lovely lamb shanks from the butcher. So it's not that. It could be spores in the backyard, the nasty result of an early spring, combined with doggy leftovers that Scott was cleaning up yesterday. Nick smokes out there as well, so that might be the connection. Me,...

Last week, we finally broke down and bought a washer and dryer. And frankly, I felt a little guilty about it. You see we've made friends with the Laundry Lady of Elmvale Acres who runs perhaps the nicest laundry facility in the city. Unlike most mats which are dingy and dreary and make you feel like a loser just walking through the door, The Elmvale Laundramart has pristine, expensively tiled floors, a big screen television and a play area for children. The washroom are immaculate and are decorated with a little whimsical sign which reads "please be kind with your behind". The Elmvale Laundramart is a hub of neighborhood activity with an eclectic crew of characters some of whom suffer from mental illnesses. I remember a conversation with one bloke who came in and cosied up to me. He announced that he'd been hit by a car and had lost his short term memory. He wandered around the mart with his laundry. He returned to my table to tell me the story over and over aga...

My children are amazed at my success in blogging. I started this blog, my second, in May 2009. Since then, nearly 50,000 people have visited this site. That's the population of a pretty big small town in Canada. Most of the people who read this blog aren't my friends. In fact, I think it's fair to say that maybe a dozen of my Facebook friends read it. Usually I get between 150 and 200 visits from people all over the world. For a while, I was a big hit in Europe and Russia. Now my peeps seemed to come from America, Canada and the U.K. I don't know why people read my blog. Unlike many successful blogsters, I rarely write on the same topic. Mostly, I just sit down at the keyboard after reading the newspaper and something comes out. Like this blog, for example. When I sit down here and look out the window on the weird and wacky St. Laurent Blvd., I often feel like a musician trying to compose a tune on the piano. I just peck away and hope what comes out is to the lik...

How brave, George Clooney. To bring attention to himself -- ah, the cause in the Sudan -- Gorgeous George got himself arrested in Washington, D.C. for daring to cross a police line. He brought his dad, who was equally arrested. In another part of America, Jason Russell, the cofounder of Invisible Children who made the viral Kony 2012 video was reportedly detained in San Diego for "being drunk in public and masturbating," This according to NBC San Diego. While these stories are unrelated, there is a theme. A person can use their celebrity status for good. Or evil. George actually risked his life and the crease in his jeans. He could have been hurt. He should have brought his wrestling gal pal Stacey Kiebler, but not our George. He went balls out, figuratively speaking. Jason went cojones out, literally. Don't like my movie, wank, wank.  What gives? Russell's wife is calling bullshit. She says Jason was being framed by the haters on the Int...

BCE's planned acquisition of Montreal-based Astral Media for $3.38 billion creates an "unmatched competitor" in the Canadian marketplace that will benefit consumers, BCE's president and CEO says. "This fits perfectly with what we are trying to do," said George Cope at a press conference Friday alongside Astral president and CEO Ian Greenberg, who will join BCE's board of directors. "The customer wins, no doubt about it, more choice in the marketplace across this four-screen evolution and in a way, also drives the Canadian broadcast business and puts it in a stronger position in the headwinds we see in this space going forward and the opportunities we see," Cope said. BCE, the country's largest telecommunications company, already owns Bell Media, which includes the CTV network, BNN and other specialty channels. I did not write the above story. I don't know if any of this is true. But BCE just bought this blog for a pa...

There has been much handwringing in this town about a plan to restructure the gambling activities of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission. Harness racers are chomping at the bit because the plan to build a big casino could mean euthanasia for the Rideau Carleton Entertainment Centre. Without the slot and now bingo activity, as well as lucrative incentives from the government, farmers, breeders and racers say it will be the end of harness racing and thousands of horses could be put down and farms sold. In other parts of the province, the OLG is shutting down racetracks throwing hundreds of folks out of jobs. This is all because the OLG is not seeing the $800 million worth of gambling dollars it once pocketed. Revenues are way down, to about $100 million and the government is worried about its crackbaby. Governments, after all, count on problem gamblers to fund its hospital operations and other social programs. So, the thinking goes, building a huge-assed ...

Breaking News. Live with Kelly will be visiting the lovely Banff, Alberta to do a series of shows the first week of April. Today, the show announced that Ben Mulroney will be sharing the stage, as co-anchor with Kelly Ripa. I'm thinking the town should change its name to Barf, Alberta. Did nobody tell Gelman that everyone in the country, with the exception of the Mulroney family and the suits at CTV, hates Ben Mulroney? He's the reason that Canadian Idol was cancelled. Canadian Idol was a good show but it was ruined by Ben Mulroney. And John Dore. People don't hate Benny because he's Lyin' Brian's son. Canadians hate him in his own right. Aside from his creepy Vlad the Impaler looks, Ben is smarmy, oily and creepy. And he's a lawyer. I don't know why CTV keeps putting him forward like some sort of cub from the Lion King. We can't escape him. He's on ETalk, he's always on Canada AM , he even hosts Canada's red carpet. America...

To: The leadership team, Via Rail From: Pierre Poutine, Toryland Communications Re: Doggygate Hello all: I am pleased to submit a crisis communications strategy to deal with the blowback concerning Jann Arden and her spiteful little dog. (Further referred to as Doggygate) As you know Jann Arden is a superstar in Canada, having sold more than a dozen CDs over her time charting the Adult Contemporary genre of Galaxie. She is well known as a lippy whipper-snapper so it was no surprise that, when she was tossed off the train "in the middle of nowhere", she immediately took to Twitter to tear Via Rail executives a new one. There is no excuse for Ms. Arden not knowing the rules. If she had checked the website, it would have stated, categorically, that pets are not allowed in Via One. No exceptions. This isn't France! Anyway, that said, she has managed to do serious damage to Via's already sketchy reputation as the "no breaks" carrier. We will need t...

My newest guilty pleasure is a daytime show called The Revolution which features celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak and stylist Tim Gunn. I like the show because it's different. It's not just a medical show or a chat show or a psychotherapy show. I'm so damned tired of Kelly and Ellen. I'm starting to get really pissed at Dr. Oz. I mean how many vitamins can a body take in one day? And don't get me started on Dr. Feel with his folksy "I been doin' this a loooong time by the way buy my book". I want something to perk me up in the middle of the afternoon, not put me to sleep. The big feature of The Revolution involves a weight loss story. It's shot over five months and involves one "hero" who is trained and fed by Harley and dressed by Tim, then headshrunk by a doc named Tiffani and medically examined by a doc named Jen. Somewhere in the middle is Ty Pennington, the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition bingocaller . I'm not quite su...

The thing about it is, they killed my mother. My grandfather. My friend Les. My uncle Vern. And they are killing many more people I know and love. Maybe even my own children. Cigarettes are public enemy number one in my book and there hasn't been much we could do about them. We can ban them from public places. We can put nasty adverts on their covers. But people will still smoke them. Still die from their toxic fumes. It's frustrating for people like me. I mean, you can't put on a pink tshirt and run around the Nation's Capital. There are no rallies, no battle cries, just death and internal destruction. My baby granddaughter's other granny has emphysema because of cigarettes. She has to go to work everyday as a cleaner in a retirement residence hooked up to an oxygen tank. She quit the smoke a year ago, but it doesn't matter. Cigarettes got her before she reached her 50th birthday. My kids, they all smoke. Despite my pleadings, despite me putting image...

Everytime International Women's Day comes around, I get depressed. That's because when I was a girl, I wanted to have a successful career, to do something, to be somebody. Fifty years later, I'm broke and underemployed. That's because I decided to take a break from my career and have children. Then my husband left me, and the rest is history. Gloria Steinem would not be impressed. I fought back, but life as a single mother is a jail sentence. When I was married, I had a great house. When I became single, I couldn't get a mortgage because most of my income came from child support. I was still paying the mortgage on time but the bank didn't care -- it just wouldn't renew my mortgage. As a result, I went from being a homeowner to a renter. I had to work part-time because I had three young children to look after and an ex-husband who was too busy making millions to spend anytime with his kids. I lost everything just trying to keep heart and soul togethe...

I'm wondering this morning how many complaints CTV Ottawa got yesterday for running a video which showed the last minutes of Constable Eric Czapnik's life. For those who haven't seen it, I wouldn't recommend it as "must see television", unless, of course you get off on seeing a reality version of The Walking Dead. Constable Czapnik is the Ottawa police officer who had his throat slashed in the parking lot of the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital two Christmases ago. The surveillance video was released yesterday to the media and showed Constable Czapnik staggering into the hospital's emergency ward, holding his slashed throat, blood spewing from his neck. As the video aired on the supper hour newscast last night, reporter Catherine Lathem gave play-by-play commentary reminding viewers that that was real blood coming from the Constable's throat. Good eye, Catherine, good eye. Didn't see it the first time? Let's show that clip again. ...

I'm not to sure about the police work surrounding Pierre Poutine, the Guelph robocaller. The investigators have managed to track him through PayPal and a registration on Separatist Street in Joliette, Quebec. Yet they still don't know who he is. They could have just asked me. I knew him by another name back in the 1970s. He spent years impersonating fire and police officials in Ottawa and giving fake quotes to all the Ottawa newspapers. His signature line was: "I never saw nutting like dat before, me." No, no. It wasn't Jean Chretien. It was none other than the scourge of editors everywhere, Zotique Laframboise. Zotique was a legend, a man of questionable vision and cruel intention. But he was revered by police reporters who were getting their drink on and couldn't be bothered covering stories. His command of situations was unparalleled. He was acclaimed for his razor sharp observations of blazing infernos. That was a big one, me. When ask...

Funny how the body goes. For years, I've resisted the siren call of aisle three at PharmaPlus. It was too scary. It had the strange smell of menthol mixed with baby powder. But Friday, I'd had enough. The products in the girly section just weren't up to the challenge. For a couple of weeks, I've had an annoying little tickle in my throat which has resulted in a kind of urinary malfunction. Meaning, every time I coughed, I peed myself. I've had this condition before, all through ten excruciating years of perimenopause, but since my taps went dry and I began to exercise daily, I've had no trouble with my bladder whatsoever. The cough brought the issue back with a vengeance. Ladies' wear did nothing to stem the tide, and so I found myself circling the incontinence aisle. First thing I spotted was a man of about 80 inspecting all the various products: the diapers, the adult underwear. So I went to check my blood pressure and mercifully by the time I ret...

This whole Robocall mess has got to be giving Little Stevie Harper the runs, as in "run for your life". It's hard to believe that Harper would know anything about this. I mean, he's not exactly Mr. Warm Fuzzball, but I don't think he's in any way dishonest, per se. But the unstated mantra "win at any cost" is his to own. He's made it abundantly clear over the years that he would take no prisoners on his quest for the Holy Canadian grail. So his minions took that to mean that they could lie, cheat, steal and fornicate on the backs of the Canadian electorate. I liked Guy Giorno's claim that he "would know" if there were any dirty tricks. If it turns out that the Tory undies are indeed soiled, he's going to have to take them to the drycleaners. Ditto for Little Stevie. Both will go down with the Good Ship Robocrap if Elections Canada and the RCMP find widespread evidence of wrongdoing. It must be remembered that Paul Ma...

For the past week, I've experienced the most excruciating pain on the right side of my neck and up towards my right ear. Last night, the pain was an eight. Not to worry, it isn't the old ticker. I have a chronic injury in my neck, in part, the result of having two pugs as nocturnal ear muffs. Occasionally, I also "throw out" my neck by talking, sneezing or coughing. It's strange, I know. The whole past week has been a nightmare. I've acquired my first cold of the year, which pisses me off as I am the hand sanitizing queen. When I go to the gym, I wipe off the machines before I settle on to them, then I wipe them again after I've sweated a couple of quarts, then I sanitize my hands as I'm walking out the door. Doing a little detective work, I've surmised that the cold came from the car dealership that employs Scott and the morons who sneeze without benefit of elbow, then wipe their toxic snot on the door nobs that Scott handles. This co...

I recently made the decision to eighty-six all the paper versions of the newspapers I read, in part to help save the environment, in part because newspapers are getting so damned expensive. I've resisted moving to online papers because I find I miss a lot of stuff. If you read them for free, online, you don't get to see all the content. I also find online newspapers to be confusing, badly designed and too dependent on video. (Dudes! If I want video, I'll go to YouTube.) At Christmas, the kids bought us a Kobo and a Kindle. Scott likes the Kobo because he's a devoted reader of fiction. I like the Kindle because I prefer non-fiction and news -- and because Amazon has great customer service. Last month, I was noodling around and discovered I could buy the Globe and Mail on my Kindle for only fifteen bucks, so I ordered it. And I love it. The e-reader version is well organized and I can skip the sections I don't read, like sports and world news. This week, I de...

I've been a devotee of American Idol for more than ten years, but it may be time to change the channel. It's so manufactured and sanitized this season. There are no contestants with so-so voices and big hearts, no underdogs to root for. It's as if Nigel Lithgoe went to Central Casting and picked 24 professional singers, gave them lame backstories and offered them up as fresh faced little hopefuls from Middle America. Where are the surprises? Where the heck is another Adam Lambert? I'm also pretty sick of the judges calling them all "stars" and suggesting they are all destined for big ticket careers. Where's the criticism? J Lo, Steve-o and the Dog seem to be content to spoon feed the hopefuls pablum while they croon us all to sleep. I found myself yearning for Simon Cowell. Yearning. We all know what has happened. For years, American Idol has ruled the ratings roost with no direct competition. Now there are too many singing competitions...